


Young As The Morning Old As The Sea

by Dragon_Of_The_South_Wind (Hoodie_2_Shoes)



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Basically, Blood, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Language, Fantasy, Jesse is a vampire sworn off human blood, M/M, Magic-Users, Mentions of homophobia, Mild Language, Mutual Pining, Okami Hanzo Shimada, Past Relationship(s), Plot, Road Trips, Vampire Jesse McCree, Young Jesse McCree/Young Hanzo Shimada, for now at least :), post apocalypse everyone opens bars apparently, pry musically inclined mccree from my cold dead hands, reinhardt is a major player because me and bbee are desperate for crusaders content, showing your tits to the enemy youre trying to befriend is cheating hanzo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-01 20:58:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 47,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15781989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoodie_2_Shoes/pseuds/Dragon_Of_The_South_Wind
Summary: Two hundred years had passed since a cult-summoning-gone-awry ripped apart the veil between the mortal realm and the Hollow, unleashing demons upon the earth and spawning Hollow-fed half-monsters from humans caught in the fray. After nearly two hundred years of living life as a Hollow-fed vampire Jesse McCree was given an ultimatum: face the judgment of his gang, or finish one last mission to walk away free.He chose the latter. It was a simple extraction plan: retrieving a wolf pup from a lone wanderer, a young man with white hair and stormy eyes. When Jesse came face-to-face with this enigmatic soul, however, he finds himself standing at another crossroads.He sees a man with nothing and everything to lose.And he needs Jesse's help.With companion art by Bbee-can!





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for the Mchanzo Reversebang 2018 event, with my partner [Bbee-can](https://bbee-can.tumblr.com/)! They made some really cool art that prompted this sprawling AU (attached below) so please check them out! And shoot their [art post](https://bbee-can.tumblr.com/post/177385911119/title-young-as-the-morning-old-as-the-sea) a reblog if you like what you see! 
> 
> Author's notes and companion playlist in the works, subscribe for future updates!

One could almost _hear_ the desert at night. The wind raising pillars of sand in hushed whispers. The night sky shifting hazily past the unbroken horizon with an indistinct, almost metallic purr. The tittering footsteps of a lone Okami stumbling through the savanna, punctured by labored breathing and sparse gunfire.

Another bullet zipped past Hanzo’s shoulder as he leaped aside. He risked a glance backward and let an arrow fly. It missed the sorcerer, again, but he was growing certain it had nothing to do with his aim. He fired another, chanting the spell, and heard the exploding shards sink into the human flesh as the soldiers fell. He turned to see a sole figure on his tail and a nebulous purple orb hurtling towards him.

_More dark magic. Delightful._

He swerved out of its path, a second too late before the orb lashed out with a malevolent arm, latching on and burrowing into the bullet hole on his stomach. When it pierced his belly he had fought the crushing pain and almost blacked out pushing his lower body to run; it returned with a vengeance then, searing and twisting into his side. He cried out and fell face down into the ground.

It burned, a sharp infinitesimal in his gut that doused his muscles in a pain unspeakable. He couldn’t even call upon the strength to untwist his spine. The tattoo on his left arm flared to life from the shock, crackling with electricity running down his skin. _Not now_ , he forced into his head, swirling mostly with panic and blind rage. The pain and the unrestful spirits were close to ripping him apart.

His bow laid in the sand inches away. He reached out with trembling fingers only to have his limbs yanked down by dark tendrils surging from the earth. He shouted as they tugged, spreading him flat like a specimen ripe for dissection, tightening the more he struggled.

“You’re slippery, little wolf,” the pale sorcerer with flaming red hair materialized before him and sneered. “Didn’t daddy and mommy told you to stay in your pack?”

“And make it easy for you?” Hanzo spat, holding his head up to meet her mismatched eyes. “You will never get us all.”

“Oh, but I already have, dear,” she said. “The rest aren’t as clever as you are. Too territorial to split up. Caught them all in one big swoop, and now my men are herding them back to my place like sheep. Ironic, isn’t it?”

 _You must run._ His father’s fervent plea returned to haunt him. _Save yourself._

“You...witch!” He trashed in the sand.

“I prefer the word magister, dear, but that seemed irrelevant now,” she said, stepping back from his sight. “You probably won’t see me again, if that brings you any comfort.”

The sorcerer closed her eyes and chanted alien whispers. She raised a clawed hand as if to seize the sky, and from within erupted a great beam of energy, all swirling darkness and light reaching into the clouds. Or was it something she caught falling straight from heaven?

Sparks leaped off his arm wildly. Hanzo only prayed she was too occupied to notice.

“I wish I could say this won’t hurt, but this business values candor among its practitioners,” she said with all the remorse of a preying vulture. “Talon thanks you for your contribution, however.”

Hanzo drew back his ramparts, and whatever was stirring inside washed over him like an avalanche.

The electric blue glow that exploded before his eyes could make anyone in the vicinity flinch. Echoing howls roared both in his head and outside his skull, and a _lightness_ that spread from his fingertips to his core. He felt the risings of the tide, the quiet intensity of the moon as night shrouded the land and claimed everything within its reach. The entire _sky_ was his.

“What is this?”

His left hand came free on its own; the rest of his bindings snapped like twigs. He rose to his feet with the heavenly glow surrounding him, and was greeted to the sight of his beasts, two iridescent canines blue against the dark, standing guard with deadly snarls. Emi lashed out with a snap, but the sorcerer vanished in a ring of smoke and transported herself far behind, the shaft of energy still jutting from her hand.

The wolves circled Hanzo as he picked up his bow. “Too much talking, witch.”

She cast down the ray, slashing the sky across its meridian. Hanzo braced himself for the impact that never came. When he opened his eyes Towa’s giant pelt was all he could see, growling as the beam crashed into her translucent body, her entire being flickering with a violent pulse.

“Towa!”

Hanzo managed to grab an arrow before he was blinded by a whiteness that blazed into every corner of his vision, the blast knocking the air from his lungs. He fell against the earth with a painful wheeze. For a moment all he could hear was the night’s quiet, mournful hum, and Emi’s mad whining. The earth swam beneath his feet. Hanzo forced himself up on his knees to see the magister’s crumpled figure in the distance and swiftly nocked his arrow. Then it hit him.

_Where did she go?_

His eyes were drawn to the ground. A little thing sat there, writhing, and Hanzo heard a small, almost childlike ‘aruff!’. The creature poked its head out, staring at him with beady eyes buried beneath its fur that glimmered faintly under the moonlight.

_Oh gods, no._

“Towa?”

 


	2. Ignition

The cigar burned out sooner than Jesse thought it would. Maybe the afternoon heat had stoked the flame, he thought, or more likely than not he was just spacing out. They were not al all hard to get; the smuggling business in Deadlock had its perks when it came to pocketing one of the goods or two. But Jesse preferred taking his puffs slow, relishing them as the bark-like tang rolled off his tongue. Maybe that was what kept him from being addicted; burning for the sake of burning was nothing but a waste to him.

Funny how smoking was the healthiest thing he’s been doing these days, physically or otherwise.

He sat alone in the unused saloon, his table surrounded by dozens more with chairs stacked on top. Everything was gathering dust. The shafts of sunlight poking through the wooden doors painted stripes of gold across the room.

He studied the saloon lurking in its own shadow, remembering its glory days. He missed the singing and dancing, Old Hank playing the guitar with a missing pinky, and the swashbuckling cowboys telling tall tales when they pass through town. _Real_ cowboys.

Jesse heard the sound of heavy boots from across the plaza. Once the boss clocked through the flapping doors she promptly removed her black robe, leaving on a brown woolen sweater. She parted the locks from her forehead as they joined the explosion of her frizzy hair. There was a series of sticky squeaks as she rubbed together the red latex gloves seemingly glued to her hands. Jesse reminded himself to tear his eyes away just as she spotted him.

Jesse rose from his seat. “Boss,”

“Yer early,” she said, settling into the chair Jesse had placed. Her lips were a bright cherry red. “And looking better. Finally had some juice?”

“Naw,” Jesse sank back into his seat. He debated whether to put out his smoke until the boss pulled out her own cigar box. Jesse waited for the lady to finish lighting her stogy, holding it so high it barely dipped into the flame. “The fire spoils the flavor,” she pointed out when Jesse had first started. He found it to spoil nothing but his patience.

The boss puffed a lungful, making the air between them all cloudy. Her smoke tasted better than Jesse’s, though.

“Boss, you’re seeing me here—”

“Don’t spoil it, kid.” She raised an eyebrow. “We’re having a good time, aren’t we? You’re in a hurry or somethin’?”

“No, boss.”

“Thought so,” she said, rolling the cigar between her thumb and forefinger. “Tell me, McCree, how long you’ve been here?”

“Been where?”

“Y’know.” She made a helicopter motion with a finger.

“In the area or in the gang?”

She chuckled while looking Jesse straight in the face. Jesse felt himself shrink under those eyes of scrutiny. “Which one do you think I give two shits about?”  

“Around a hundred and eighty, I think.”

She made a long whistling noise. “Four different managements and yer still hangin’ around. If that ain’t impressive I don’t know what is.”

Jesse licked the front of his teeth, his tongue gliding over the sharp tips in the middle. He couldn’t bring himself to smoke anymore. The boss leaned close, sporting an all-business, tight-lipped smile.

“How ‘bout kills?”

“What?”

“Ya heard me.” She paused to roll off the ash, breaking eye contact for once. “How many bodies you’ve got your hands on? Me, I’ve lost count before I even took over from McKinney, but I gotta feeling you’re a nostalgic person. You remember, don’t you?”

Jesse had no answer that wouldn’t make him look like either a fool or a prick, so he kept silent and looked down at his crusty jeans.

“See, that’s the problem, McCree.” The boss sighed, the creases returning to her face. “You’re a good kid. Even better smuggler. Deadlock could use more like ya. But your… _problem_.” She gestured to the sky, which Jesse couldn’t help but find funny. “The gang’s making noise, y’know? Complaining about the kid who’s playing high ‘n mighty.”

“Truth is,” she said, rubbing her nose. “I can’t have a vampire who can’t kill.”

Jesse shouldn’t be able to feel a heartbeat, but the rush of blood in his ears came distractingly loud. He clenched his fist and didn’t dare look up. Could he run? He might lose them under the sun, but he’s not going anywhere in this barren-ass place if they came after him on bikes. Maybe he could hustle his way out, but his tricks would be hard-pressed to work on these folks even if his brain wasn’t as loaded with molten lead right now.

Could this be it? He can’t fucking _die_ in the hands of—

“So I’m giving you one shot if you’re serious ‘bout quitting.”

Jesse’s head snapped up. The boss didn’t look like she was joking but then again, he never was good at reading faces.

“What?” he finally spat out.

“What? Don’t feel like leaving now?”

“No, boss,” Jesse felt her pointed look. “I mean—“

“Wait, you thought I was gonna put ya down?”

Jesse swallowed. “Yer not?”

She snorted. “Do I look like that much of a dictator to ya? Those scum broke rules, pulled stunts that killed some folks, or were just plain traitors. I ain’t killin’ for fun, kid.” She took the time to draw another mouthful of smoke. “Tell me the truth. Yer not happy living here, aren't you?”

_Under the people that stormed my town, killed my parents, made me a freak, and threatened submission with death? Tough call._

“Not really, boss.”

“Course,” she said. “So if I make you a deal you’d take it?”

 _Oh, you bet your fat ass I’d take it._ “I dunno, boss, what sorta deal we’re talking about?”

She rested the cigar on his ashtray and tossed her phone onto the table. Jesse studied the sketch in the holovid: a young man with sharp, regal features, light-colored long hair, weird face markings. A foreigner’s face, albeit a pretty one. He was draped in a traditional-looking robe Jesse had never seen elsewhere.

His mind went to the worst place immediately. “Assassination?”

“Naw, just need you to take something from him,” the boss said. “You’ll have to steal his pet wolf.”

“ _What?"_

“Fuck, this might be the most whats I’ve heard from someone in a century, kid. A wolf. A pup ‘bout the size of a poodle.” She raised her hands for scale, which frankly Jesse could do without. He’d seen a goddamn poodle.

“Beg your pardon, boss, but why the hell are we stealing a pup for?”

She clicked her tongue. “Name one thing we’ve done that wasn’t for cash. Someone higher up put out this bounty for the animal, says they’re eyeing a good price from buyers on the black market. We’re just out for the reward. Simple as that.”

 _Since when is Deadlock into animal smuggling?_ “If it’s that simple why aren’t they going themselves?”

“Oh they did. Said this one’s more slippery than most, saw them coming miles away and scramed. So who better at tracking someone down than us vamps?”

“And you’re sending me? Alone?”

The boss sighed. “They’re not lying when they told me you are thicker than all the rocks in the grove put together, kid. No one else _knows_ about the job. As important as it is, this isn’t about getting the money _in_. It’s about getting you _out_. Or have you forgotten that part?”

Jesse said nothing.

She leaned forward. “No one’s managed to leave the gang in ages. In one piece, that is. But I know what you have going on, and that’s why we’re gonna sort this out. You have yer own rules. I respect the shit outta that. You wanna leave? Best I could do is show the rest of the gang ya earned that. You get me, McCree?”

“Yes boss.” Jesse allowed himself to marvel once the shock has ebbed. _She’s looking after me?_

“Good. If this is my last job fer ya, we’re gonna make sure nothing goes wrong.”

Jesse stared at the figure rotating before him. An evasive man and a wolf pup. It shouldn’t make him feel this queasy, but everything made him queasy if he was honest with himself. He thought of his life before and the idea of a future without a hefty price tag paid in blood. That alone was worth steeling his heart for.

“So when do I start, boss?”

“Tonight.”


	3. Elementary

Jesse kept the Cross above him as he trod across the barren wastes, heading ever northwards with the evening chill light on his skin.

He couldn’t smell anything yet. The breeze was good though, the air plain and dry and scarcely polluted. A day-old scent would be easy to pick up. With luck he might get this over with before the night ended.

A gust of wind made him held on to his hat. The cold was starting to bother him a little. Jesse rubbed on the sleeves of his sweater, suddenly aware of his breath steaming in the air. He didn’t want to take his dose so soon, with the night still young and his journey ahead unknowably distant. He quickened his pace.

How long had it been since he was out roaming the desert alone? He thought of the firearms exchange with the bandits that went south, scattering what precious few of his party that survived. He resorted to hiding in the back of an rusty station wagon in the middle of nowhere, the pistol shaking between his bony fingers. Even all these years later, one hard pull would be enough to remind him of the soreness in his fingers after clenching on the gun through the first few terrifying hours.

Martin found him before sunrise, and the others were never heard from again. He was so sure that punishment was in store as he returned to Deadlock in a rattled mess, but Nash only bought him a beer, toasted the fallen, praised his good reflexes, and started putting him on more jobs that didn’t involve hauling crates around. Jesse might’ve felt proud back then, the promotion and the recognition rushing up his head like the blood they fed him.

That was before his first hunt, though.

He tried to focus on the distant hills as he walked, with its jagged rocks and valleys that stretched far beyond the sand wastes he called home. He always listened in to the older folks’ stories of the world outside, of the greenlands where one couldn’t find a patch of barren soil. The furthest he ventured into the world was his trek with the gang into the snowy pine forest up north, which he spent gawking at the frost gathering on his nose and crunching beneath his feet in a rush of childish excitement. The blinding whiteness blanketing the highland vistas, the deers and does leaping across their path, the stars embroidered along the great streak of light where the heavens spilled into the world. He returned from the trip finding everything back home leeched of their colors.

His pocket started beeping. Jesse checked his phone and was taken aback by how far he’d come while lost in thought.

He turned northeast towards the blinking map marker and put his mind on sniffing. Nothing conspicuous along his path. Everything was cast in a gray baleful light, but Jesse saw little else other than abandoned shacks and wilting shrubs, and the boundless stretch of sand. The terrain, slowly turning rocky, started up a gentle incline against the wind. Jesse watched the coordinate approach while shielding his eyes.

A chime, and the beeping ceased. Jesse sighed. Why did he even had his hopes—

The ground ended in a cliff that Jesse nearly stumbled into. He cursed, planting his feet.

No, not a cliff. A crater. Shallow enough to reach his thighs and not even that wide across, but perfectly round. And new, too; what little pebbles remained had a freshly unearthed smell.  

“I’ll be damned.”

Did the man blew something up to cover his tracks? It seemed too perfectly symmetrical for dynamite, and the scent of this much gunpowder would reach him from miles away. Some advanced energy charge? _That_ would be reason for concern.

Jesse scouted the area and found nothing near the crater. He swept his fingers across the shaven rock beneath his feet. The scent, the touch, everything felt too damn clean. _No one told me none of this shit._ Then the wind took a detour, and Jesse perked up his nose.

Faint but distinct, a nameless phantom of a scent drifting in the wind. Only one way to be certain.

He slipped off his backpack to retrieve one of the bags that had been sloshing around all evening, holding the lamb’s blood in one hand and his swiss army knife in the other. He was thirsty, despite what he told himself. He nicked open the side of the vacuum packet, the outrageous smell leaking into the otherwise tasteless air.

Jesse held up the bag and let the blood pour. The second it touched his lips his entire body twitched, the disgustingly rich copper tang surging to his brain. Several drops trickled down his lips and chin. He felt his senses shut down for a heartbeat before everything flared open, the world so sharply in focus he flinched at the light, bent over groaning until he could ease open his eyelids. Every single star glimmered like a beacon above the horizon. He heard a fennec’s chirps, then somewhere else a beetle burrowing in the sand. The night’s whispers swelled, the calling of critters sprinkled atop the wind’s howl that carried to him every sound in the land.

The scent returned to him right away, as overwhelming as the blood was. Animal fur. Unmistakably canine. The trail stretched west, so clean it looked like the yellow fucking brick road leading the way.

_Gotcha._

 

*

 

Jesse had to stop running when he saw lights twinkling ahead, sweat beading on his cold forehead. He wiped his lips and hoped the color had returned to his cheeks. He took a second to straighten his sleeves and hat, and walked towards the town.

It was a human settlement, no question about that. He could smell the burning meat and gasoline, and the astounding noise that could only come from an R&R along the Route. The drunken mass was impossible to miss. String lights dangled across rooftops and around cabins, making the otherwise shambling town look almost festive.

The spots in his vision came when he found the road leading into town, and he had to lean on a boulder before his legs gave way. _Been too long since my last dose._ He drew in a deep breath to stop his head from spinning, and took slow steps with one hand against the rock. _One foot at a time. No big deal._

The trail was fresher here, but mingled with every smelly thing humans could possibly make: piss, smoke, charred food. _Good place to mask your scent._

He began timing his breaths to his footsteps when he could finally stand straight. It helped, but the glares were swirling together and the noises soupy in his ears. Water. He could use some water.  

Jesse crossed a wooden archway where he could only make out ‘Welcome’ and a huge capital S painted in blue. It looked like every other human-occupied town at night, with dusty motorbikes parked along the sand-covered streets and old-timey shopfronts that were mostly closed save for one in the corner of the alleyway, where light and chatter poured out of saloon doors just like the ones in Deadlock Grove.

If this place was as old as it looked a fountain should be right around the entrance, but its history could only stretch so far. Jesse started towards the bustling saloon. The world steadied a little when he reached the door, but he stumbled on the steps all the same. The lamps nearly blinded him as he shuffled in and knocked into what he assumed was the bartender’s counter.

“Men’s room?” Jesse asked shakily.

“Out back,” a harsh female voice said.

It was uproarious inside. He spotted several waiters weaving through the crowd with their hands full of drinks. A rowdy gang spat and laughed and clinked glasses. He prayed that Deadlock had no grudge with any of them, or the night’s gonna get hell of a lot longer.

He fumbled his way to the back door and found the tap outside. When the ice cold water splashed his face he let out a shuddering groan. The world clicked back into place. Sluggish, but enough to compose himself for the job.

Walking back inside the first thing he noticed was the fire burning on the other side of the room, then the stares. Several eyes were on him, but Jesse kept his hat low and slumped right onto a seat in front of the bartender. She was wiping the counter and humming a tune, and nodded when they met eyes.

“Can I get you anything, son?”

“A ginger ale would be fine, ma’am.”

It turned out more than fine. The spice cleared up his head before he knew it, the heat in his belly a welcome respite. He scanned the patrons: a young couple sharing a mug of beer, a lady with shocking green hair nose-deep in her phone, a table of four playing poker, and the gang of bikers now bellowing over a drinking game.

“Hands off my waiter, Jim!” the bartender shouted out of nowhere, her eyes never leaving the glasses she was cleaning.

“I was stuffing the bill into his pocket! His hands are full!”

Jesse emptied his mug, tossed two credits onto the counter, and slipped his phone beside them. “Just wonderin’, ma’am, you seen someone like this strolling by?”

She only gave the sketch a passing glance. “Ya have to ask someone else, son. Lotsa folk coming and going around here.”

Jesse was reminded of his bemusement when the boss said he wasn’t going to scare anyone into talking, and bit the inside of his cheek. He quietly fished out eight more chips onto the table. The lady swept them into her apron with a face of stone.

“I might’ve heard from Lil’ Tate down at Swimmer’s Inn that a handsome young lad with white hair checked in yesterday. We don’t see much of that around here, so...” she trailed off.

Jesse thanked her, slid down from his chair, and headed for the exit. His eyes went over the crowd once more, as oblivious to his departure as they were his arrival. He found himself pausing at one of the poker players. His bald head was inked with a rose vine that crept up his neck and bloomed at his temple. Had he seen him somewhere?

The man turned around. Staring at Jesse were his one real eye and one that glowed an electric red.

Jesse averted his gaze, perhaps too quickly, and strutted out the door. Was the cybernetic eye Hollowed? He couldn’t stay long.

The Swimmer’s Inn at the edge of town was the only other establishment with open doors, the letters on its blue signboard buzzing on and off as they illuminated the narrow building. Jesse imagined he would have to bribe the counter a shitload to investigate the guests, but then he saw from a distance the second floor window bright as day, curtains drawn where the rest were neatly tied up.

There was a skinny boy sitting the counter. Jesse entered the lobby awash in a fluorescent light, and the room smelled so thick of fur he almost sneezed. _The man’s getting sloppy._

The ladder leading upstairs was just to his left. He remembered the crater in the desert, and touched the six-shooter at his hip for comfort that never arrived.

Face ID’ed. Tracks all over. Renting an empty inn.

_Nope. Nopenopenope._

He retraced his steps out and stood facing the building, and waited. No movement in the second floor.

Why second floor, though? Why not the take the highest if you’re doing surveillance?

Unless.

Jesse examined the perimeter. Behind the inn stood a shoddy old apartment swallowed in the night’s gloom, all four stories devoid of any sign of life.

One spot for surveillance, one spot _under_ surveillance.

_Oh, you’re good, partner. Almost good enough._

“Looking for a bed, sir?” the boy finally noticed him.

“S’alright,” Jesse said with a grin and a wave. “Ain’t getting any sleep tonight.”


	4. Handshake

Swimmer’s Alley was ghost-quiet by the time the last of the saloon lights wink off. Out came the bartender lady with her purse dangling from her elbow as she lit a cigarette, and disappeared into a cabin across the street. The entire town had fallen into slumber with only two lamp posts standing guard. It was two thirty in the morning.

And Jesse could finally begin.

He had his half-empty ziploc bag of blood laying with the rest of his belongings in a heap outside the deserted apartment, where he had been smoking and sipping on cans of soda as he waited for the hours to past. The blood was a little pick-me-up, too little for a kick but enough to give him an upper hand in case things go south. If all goes to plan he’d have to gulp down the rest and that should be enough for getting outta dodge. The man couldn’t catch up even if he could run like the wind then.

Steal and scram. Airtight plan.

Jesse studied the wall above his head. Simple plank ledges, no bars or glass shards on the windows, no wires and pipes. He touched the brick wall that should be sturdy enough to hold a skinny vampire without falling to pieces.

He flexed his fingers and grabbed the first ledge. His feet found an opening where a brick was chipped away, and he kicked his way onto the air-conditioning unit. Jesse hauled his entire body onto the compressor and made it groan so loud he flinched. When he was certain no one came running with pitchforks he leaned one foot on another landing and shuffled onto the ledge. _Steady now._

Second floor was smooth sailing with the numerous missing bricks along the wall that he scaled all the way up to the third. He peeked into the window just to be certain, finding an empty room with its furniture covered in white sheets and a blanket of dust.

No place to go but up. The desert wind whistled in his ears like hushed cries of warning. Jesse felt for his gun. Still there. He sucked in a deep breath, and climbed.

He swung himself up to the edge of the fourth floor window, back against the wall. The wolf’s scent was overpowering. From his spot he could see the desk inside, freshly dusted. The dust trail from the chair’s legs showed signs of use. He risked a glance further to find the closet doors neatly shut, the mattress missing from the bed, and the peculiar scent of dead fires.

There was no one in the room.

Jesse felt his guts sink. He lifted his leg across the windowpane and slipped inside. Everything felt newly touched with hints of disturbance everywhere, and the smell. He was so sure it was right _there_. No one had left or entered the apartment since he arrived. He couldn’t have grown wings, could he? Was he gone even before that? Jesse gazed out the window and find nothing but more sand beyond the reach of his eye. Wherever he was, he must still be running.

His boot caught a tiny metal bin on the floor and knocked it over. Jesse knelt to inspect the ashes that came tumbling out, and held up a piece of what he assumed to be a food wrapper that hadn’t burned to a crisp. Jesse gave it a whiff and immediately winced when he caught traces of garlic. _This can’t be older than three hours._

In the dead of night, he heard the tiniest sneeze.

Jesse’s head snapped towards the door and the air right in front of him rippled, a tiny sliver of light in the middle of the room that became solid for half a heartbeat before disappearing again.

“The hell?”

He stood up and reached for his gun.

“Touch that and you are dead.”

Jesse froze, his hand awkwardly poised inches from his holster. He didn’t dare make further moves when he couldn’t even tell where the voice came from.

The air shimmered again. It started with a glowing shard suspended in midair that grew into a thousand pieces like a shattered mirror, before dissolving into nothingness in front of his eyes. The man from the sketch was standing right in the open, barely looking like the same person with a blue jacket and his hair tied in a bun where the sides were buzzed. Jesse figured from the grayscale photo that he must have gold or ash blonde hair, but no. It was white, snowy and gleaming down to the very last strand. Jesse only recognized him from his face marking, two golden diamonds beneath amber eyes that gleamed with hostility.

Then he saw the arrowhead pointed straight at his face.

“Alright, let’s all calm down here.” Jesse raised his hands. “Nobody’s getting hurt—”

“If I kill you first.” He pulled his bowstring.

“Woah, woah!” Jesse cried. His eyes were drawn to the cloth bundled up on the floor, and the ball of fur that must had been the pup he was looking for. “I’m just...”

Is it _glowing_?

The man caught his stare. “Do not _think_ about laying a finger on her. I know you are here to finish what you started. You are wasting your time, and Talon is going to be one man short.”

_Fucking Talon has a hand in this? The fuck did I got myself into?_

“Now now, I’m sure you’re a reasonable person,” Jesse said, taking a step back. The only way out is to play dumb and hope his tongue won’t fail him. He tried to hold eye contact, praying the man wouldn’t notice him inching towards the window. “If you wanted me dead I’d have an arrow between my eyes already.”

“Are you taunting me?”

“Nononono, I’m just telling you I’m not here for whatever you think I’m here for.” One more step. “Look, I’m not even with Talon, okay? I don’t even know what happened to you and your pet. I’m just passin’ through.” One more. Just a bit closer.

“Do not feed me your lies. This is your people’s doing.” He gestured his head to the yawning pup. “You are either awfully bold or foolish to think I would let you harm both my wolves.”

Jesse paused. “Both?”

A flash of puzzlement crossed his face before he smirked. “They did not tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Jesse became even more perplexed when the man lowered his weapon. “I swear I don’t—”

It emerged so slowly that Jesse was caught full in the face before he knew it. A soft but distinct blue glow washed over the man’s face and soon illuminated every corner of the room, purging the shadows with a sheet of light that rippled like sunbeams falling upon water.

Jesse snapped out of his gawking when he heard a deep rumbling sound from behind. He turned his half-frozen neck towards the window and found himself one breath away from a ginormous eyeball with a cornflower-colored iris, staring him down with a fury so thick it made his legs weak.

“W...what...” he croaked.

The grunting stopped. It lifted a maw thick as a tree, flashing rows upon rows of teeth that could probably snap his head off like a broccoli. Then a bark filled his ears, a deafening, guttural sound that sends his blood running cold. Jesse fell on his back, screaming, scrambling away from the creature long after it had silenced.

 

 

 

Something firm bumped into his back. He made an indignant yelp when he looked up to see the man’s cold, pitying eyes staring back.

“Now that all of us have met,” the man said, crossing his arms. “It is time for some friendly heart-to-heart, wouldn’t you say?”

“Um, uh.” his panting came out as wheezes. ”Please don’t kill me.”

“Oh, no. Not yet.” He stepped in front of him, obscuring the monstrosity outside. Jesse didn’t know which was more chilling to look at. “But my pet has been rather hungry since we escaped. For revenge or for food, I could not say.”

He grabbed Jesse’s chin and lifted his face. The glow from the ghost wolf gave the man’s sharp outline an icy, devilish halo.

“If you want to keep your head,” he said. “Start talking, demon.”

 

*

 

The man had dragged a chair and sat himself down right next to the window, where Jesse had an unobstructed view of the four-storey tall beast staring at him with eyes of murder. Jesse sat in the same spot and leaned back against the bed. He still couldn’t feel his legs.

So far all his options ended with him either in the belly of the wolf or in a puddle of his own blood, an arrow sticking out his neck. He decided to keep his mouth shut. He gazed longingly at the gun that the man made him slide across the floor, but he figured it wouldn’t be much use against a spirit creature with a bloodlust.

The man was hardly blinking. He studied him with mild disinterest as Jesse uncomfortably licked his lips.

“I see you have nothing to offer.” He reached for his bow on the desk.

“Wait! Wait.” Jesse cried. “At least tell me whaddaya want to hear.”

“Perhaps start with the fact that you have not denied my claim on your identity,” he said. “I never knew Talon hires degenerates like your kind.”

That stung more than Jesse let on. “I told you, I’m not with Talon. But yes, I am Hollow-fed. Though to tell the truth you don’t feel much mortal yourself.” Jesse glanced at the snarling wolf. “Whatever that thing is, it didn’t come from the Hollow, did it?”

“Watch your tongue,” he said, twirling the arrow between his fingers. “Where we come from is none of your concern. Remember who is asking the questions, now. You are lucky to be sitting here. My people are seldom kind to demons or assassins, much less both together.”

“I’m not here to kill anyone, alright?”

“So all demons stalk someone across the desert and break into his place in the middle of the night for supper?”

Words deserted him. _Devil’s ass, think of something!_

“You have been avoiding the question since you arrived.” The man rose from his chair. “You had your chance.”

“I’m here to help!” Jesse blurted out.

The man paused. The beast outside made a loud whine, and the pup yelped to remind them of its presence. Jesse faced his stare with an earnest front while his mind was scattered all over the place. _What the fuck did you do?_

The man snorted. It was so ungraciously loud Jesse jumped a little. He tried to cover it up with a cough before sitting back down.

“Enlighten me, then,” he said, feigning curiosity.

“I ran from my gang,” Jesse told him. It didn’t sound too stupid for a start. “Deadlock, in Deadlock Grove down the Route. All vampires. See?”

He lifted his sleeve until he could see the tattoo of a skull chained to a pair of wings. He looked at the man and was glad that he at least wiped the accommodating smile off his face. Stories leaped into his mind and started to roll.

 _The best lies are drawn from the truth._ That was from McKinney. He might actually save his life again after all this time.

“I was made Hollow-fed when I was this age, so I never got a hang of the typical vampire’s thirst for human blood. I’m not the kind that kills people. You can imagine how that would fare with vampire business. I’d prob’ly be dead before the century if I didn’t do my job well enough that my first three bosses gave me a pass.

“The new boss wasn’t happy about that. Then I heard whispers about...” he looked at the floor and sighed. Damn _I’m good at this._ “About the boss going to put me down. I packed my stuff and wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to go. They’ll hunt me down in a matter of hours in the desert. Then I heard about you.”

Jesse braced himself for questions, but the man only watched him with calculating eyes.

“Somehow my gang got word of you out alone in the desert, and there’s a price on your head. Maybe it’s your wolf. I don’t know. But I s’pose you’re a threat because they’re arming the shit up. Someone even vampires can’t go up against bare-handed. So I thought if I can find you before they could—”

“You can offer this information for safe passage out of the desert.”

Jesse swallowed. “That’s the plan.”

“One that might work,” he said, looking at the floor. “If not for the fact that your lot of demons do not frighten me. You, on the other hand...”

He began walking towards him in agonizingly slow steps. Jesse did not even dare move his neck.

“...tracked me all the way across the desert. Betrayed your tribe for your own safety. Now, you’ve lost your bargain for protection and desperate for shelter. I cannot imagine who you would bring to my heels if I set you free.”

He was breathing into Jesse’s ear. Right ahead the wolf was glaring back at him. Jesse swallowed, only to have his Adam's apple bump into the arrow shaft pressed on his neck. He could feel the polished wood slide across his skin. The room was pin-drop silent save for his own spiked breathing. _What else does this crazy bastard want?_

“My apologies.” The wolf, the small one, barked like wild.

The wolf.

_Finish what you started._

_Let you harm both my wolves._

“What if I can help get your wolf back?” Jesse whispered.

The arrow froze in place. The barks shrunk into something resembling hiccups.

“That’s what Talon did, right? Turned your pet from the big boss over there to that lil’ thing?” Jesse kept his eyes straight as the ghost wolf tilted its head. “You’ve met Magister O’Deorain then.”

“So you do have acquaintances.”

“We sell weapons. Talon’s been a long time buyer but I never saw her in person, just the other leader who’s always in a skull mask. Creepy dude. Prob’ly a wight or somethin’.”

The man released him. “Get to the point.”

“I know a guy,” Jesse said. “Living way up north in Sunblades. Says he’s just a healer learning magic but I reckon he’s prob’ly the best sorcerer I’ve seen that isn’t sided with some shitty organizations or after your money. Cured one of us of a real bad blood poisoning some thirty years back when we were in the Frostlands.

“I could show you the way. Settles the problem of me snitching too, right? Chances are he could bring your pet back to normal.” Jesse looked the man in the eye, reading his growing uncertainty. “If you have no one for the job, that is.”

“For all you know he could be dead.”

“It was less than forty years ago, and he’s not even that old.”

“What if he is just what he claims? A healer? You know nothing about magic.”

“Perhaps,” Jesse said, trying to assess how far he could go. “I’m just sayin’ if you’re desperate, I’m right here. No use to you dead though. Don’t s’pose you’d go through all this trouble if you can just get a new puppy from wherever it came.”

Jesse followed his gaze to the wolf lying among the blankets. It was his first proper glimpse at the thing; it looked just like every other canine pup except for its glowing pelt, a feathery tinge of blue that was several shades lighter than the one outside the window. It padded its ear with a front paw and slipped, stumbling out of its little nest.

“You are just telling me in the hopes of being spared.”

“If I could save my own skin I would feel better, sure, but you have my word about the sorcerer. I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

He spat. “What honor does your kind have to speak of?”

“Even us demons would think twice if it means having your mom come back and have you a spanking, y’know.”

The man was not amused. He yanked Jesse up by the collar, and his metallic, unrelenting eyes all but made Jesse flinch. He steeled himself for more threats, but then the man’s lips twisted into a little smile and had Jesse fear for his life again.

“That would be unwise, yes,” he said. “No need to involve your mother. I can give you other things to worry about.”

He loosened his grip. Jesse fell on his butt and was dragged along by the nape, kicking and failing to cling on any of the furniture as he skidded across the cement.

_The window. He’s bringing me to the window._

“Lemme go!”

The pup chased him and barked. Jesse reached for his gun as they passed, but his fingertips brushed the barrel and made it spiral under the closet. His shirt made a ripping sound in protest as he was lifted off the ground.

Off the ground and into the air.

Vertigo jolted down his spine as the man tossed him from the ledge. Before the scream could reach his throat he found himself dangling in mid air, his lower body swaying like a pendulum, nothing but a deadly drop between him and the ground. His trampled belongings laid on the sand in a bloody puddle. My phone. _My blood packs._

The man watched him from the window, cross-armed. Cold wind whistled and whisked against the back of Jesse’s neck in steady gushes. He clasped his face in horror when it dawned on him what he was hanging from. “Oh fuck, oh fuck—”

“We leave for my home at sunrise. In the meantime, she will be looking after you.” He retreated into his room, leaving Jesse shuddering at the wolf’s every breath. “You two be good.”


	5. Hatsu Yuki (First Snow)

The morning sun was startlingly quick to rise when one paid enough mind. Jesse could’ve sworn the eastern light was still fish-belly pink just seconds ago when dawn broke, and now it was hanging high enough to paint the sky a brilliant yellow that stretched into a deep, dark blue above their heads, where wispy ribbons of cloud sailed towards the west. Sand dunes gleamed in stripes of red and gold, their shadows reluctantly retreating beneath the earth. The wasteland had the most breathtaking sunrises, something he rarely had the chance to witness without the sharp ridges and valleys of Deadlock Grove blocking the view.

He should be watching this by a tall, plunging cliff with his earbuds and a warm mug of tea, he thought bitterly, not in the jaws of a giant wolf dashing across the desert with sand spraying full on his face. Add that to the sun stabbing him in the eyes and a dry throat close to cracking, and he felt nothing short of miserable.  

“Can I at least have my hat back?” he shouted.

No answer.

“Please! Sand’s getting in my eye!”

“You’ll lose it to the wind,” the man finally said from the wolf’s back, his voice muffled by the wind.

“I can hold it! I have my hands!”

“And you will be quiet if you wish to keep them.”

He begrudgingly shut his eyes. He should be somewhat grateful that the wolf could keep his head steady while running and not fling his stomach out. The night had became that much longer when he realized the beast had no intentions of releasing him, and the man couldn’t bother to answer his protests. Jesse might had fallen asleep with his captor staying still as a rock, but every time he drifted away the sensation of falling would slip into his dreams and jolt him awake.

When he resorted to talking to the wolf she simply ignored him like one did a buzzing insect. He poked around and said he’s just gonna call her Big Boss. She answered by dropping him shrieking and catching him before he could touch the ground. Suffice to say he stopped trying.

Jesse had to give the man credit though. He found the idea of traveling without the guise of darkness utterly mad before they left Swimmer’s Alley, but he himself had trouble seeing the wolf under the morning light, its outline but a shimmering mist. Now that the sun was directly ahead of them it passed through the wolf’s body like it was water. If he squinted the man riding it would look somewhat like a frog zooming through the air. He bit down his laughter .

An hour into their journey Jesse freaked out when he saw their shadows missing, but promptly remembered the magic light show in the apartment. The man didn’t cast any shadow then.

“You’re doing that invisibility cloak thing again?”

“Your questions are exhausting, demon,” the man said, “but yes. Raiders and merchants are not uncommon in these regions.”

“It’s pretty cool, that’s all.”

“I need to concentrate when it comes to something of this size so for the last time, be quiet.”

That did shut him up. He was getting dizzy from the heat and thirst, but decided better than provoking him.

What was he bringing him to? It unnerved Jesse to think about being in the company of an entire tribe of people who could wield magic and kept giant ghosts wolves as pets. Interrogation? Mind-controlling tricks?

Maybe he never intended for Jesse to leave.

Jesse had spun the ploy as a desperate measure to buy time. Now that he earned enough of that to ponder, his faith in someone with so little love for demons to go slack enough for him to escape seemed laughable.

He couldn’t possibly be hauled along all the way to Sunblades, could he? Even if his wild proposal paid off, that would mean no wolf pup for the boss. He couldn’t even start to imagine what would happen if he returned to the grove after days, possibly weeks, empty handed.

The boss had escaped his mind all this while, Jesse realized with a start. Did she know about this whole spirit wolf ordeal with Talon? _She better fucking not_ , he thought, but the threat sounded hollow even in his own head.

Jesse was wrung out of his musing when the wolf stopped to take a sniff, then dashed off his original path. Wherever they’re taking him, they were close. Several pauses and turns later their transport huffed and slowed to a brisk jog. Their shadows popped up beneath them, and Jesse took that as his sign to engage in disarming small talk.

“Sooooo,” he started. “What did you do to cross Talon?”

“I did not _cross_ them,” he snapped. “That witch invaded my home and threatened bloodshed.”

“Wait, she attacked your people? Are they even still alive?”

Jesse heard a gap. “I led her away. She brought soldiers but they had no chance against our warriors.”

To that Jesse said nothing. Talon had a reputation. But up against an entire group of these folk? That’s a different story whatsoever.

“I s’pose if all of you have forty-feet tall predators at their command it would be like swatting flies, huh?”

Another gap. Jesse sensed a pattern. “Just a handful, but all are well-trained. Some gunfire would be no threat.”

“The magister?”

“Escaped.” He offered no further explanation. Jesse found the choice of word interesting. “Wait...”

Out of the unbroken horizon rose a circle of jagged rocks, its long pointed tips blooming like a burst bubble that clawed at the sun. Jesse had never seen anything like it in the whole wide wasteland. From the hazy distance he couldn’t tell if it was as big as a house or a mountain.

Big Boss whined. The man muttered something too low to hear.

“Somethin’ wrong?” Jesse swung around like a disco ball and was greeted by the man’s puzzled face hovering over him.

“That,” he pointed. 

“It’s not where we’re heading?”

“It is,” the man said grimly. “And it should not be seen from here.”

The wolf raced ahead. Jesse clutched onto its fur to stop himself from lurching. The stone structure zoomed towards them ever so slowly, and Jesse’s jaw dropped when they approached. The thing was _massive_. An echelon of rocks sprouted like curved mineral shards, each stilt thicker than a tree and rising into the clouds. They reminded him of a giant bowl if it was made of bones, perhaps the ribs of a great, forgotten behemoth that lived and died before the dawn of time.

The base was crowded with more stones adjoined by time into a rocky mound that blocked his sight looking in. The wolf sniffed and prodded along the perimeter until they came across a clearing. It eased him onto the ground gently enough, but his legs stiffened at the impact and threatened to crumple beneath him. The man leaped down from her back and placed the bundle of blankets in front of the wolf. She gave it a tentative nudge with her nose as it wriggled on the ground.

Jesse thought about slipping away there and then but the wolves had no intention of joining their master. He wouldn’t dare hope to outrun the beast, with the desert as vast as it was desolate. Not without fresh blood. Big Boss caught him staring and growled, and Jesse decided he was safer off with a crazy stranger than a feral animal ten times his size.

The man was past the archway when Jesse chased him down. The stone was thick enough for it to be coined a tunnel, one Jesse couldn’t tell was natural or sculpted. He let his fingers run through the bumps and cracks on the wall. It was strangely cold, with inscriptions he couldn’t read scattered on surfaces that had been shaved flat.

Jesse’s eyes were so occupied by the writings he bumped right into the man, still as a statue with sunlight in his hair. Jesse stepped out of the shadows.

“Cry the devil.”

The tunnel opened up into a circular enclosure wider than the entirety of Deadlock Grove, where dozens of muted but elegant buildings were erected on top of a rocky terrain adorned with shrubs and neatly-trimmed topiaries, bizarre horns sprouting from their roofs and their exteriors made of shiny wood. Above them unraveled the sky where the jagged ridges ended, and the barricaded view brought to mind the likeness of a bird cage without a dome. Except no cage had the right to look this beautiful.

Jesse’s eyes were drawn to the ground when he felt the path forward slope down beneath his feet. He realized the entire area declined towards the center like a funnel, and sitting right at the bottom—

—was honest-to-god the largest fucking tree he’d ever seen, an explosion of white in place of leaves crowning a stout but forked trunk, its pale roots sprawling over a lonesome island. In a fucking _lake_.

“Shit,” he sputtered. “You live here?”

The man ignored him altogether, his jaw hanging and a frown deeply set in his brows. He walked down with his bow nocked. “Otosan! Genji!” he cried.

Jesse trailed behind him, taking in the foreign landscape. The place was founded on a collection of boulders large and small, a crust of sand settling on the rocky surfaces where water once flowed. On the colossal walls fencing them in Jesse spotted gnarly stalactites and limestones from their less weathered days. He noted the small but respectable pool of water, the texture of the rocks and the roof exposed to the elements, and everything made sense: in the eastern part of the desert heavy with precipitation a cavern once stood, molded by sky and sea as the earth settled, until something ( _or someone_ , came the unnerving afterthought) blasted the top wide open and interrupted an underground watering hole in the making.

They passed a wooden platform built into a pocket in the wall, with dummies and swords and arrows strewn about. Empty benches sat next to a small patch of herbs yet unharvested. Jesse stumbled over the foot of a robed woman playing a flute, carved from marble. He saw stone plates erected beneath some of the larger trees with their centers hollowed out, and what looked like small urns of ash on the ground. More greens thrived here than all of the desert he had trekked combined, blessing the air with something fresh. Jesse could see how a civilization flourished in this little paradise away from the rest of the world.

Except there was nobody here. The place was as quiet as a cemetery at midnight, complete with the eerie rustling of leaves.

“Otosan! Genji!”

The ground beneath them flattened when they descended upon the lake. Diamonds danced and shimmered off the crystalline water. Petals tumbled off the canopy in a dream-like flurry of snow. Up close, Jesse spotted a handful of wilting branches where the flowers had turned brown, but the blemish detracted nothing from its allure. Living in the wasteland, a flower in bloom was something to marvel at. An entire tree of them was almost overwhelming to behold.

He dropped on all fours to get a mouthful of the cool water with his hands. It was delightfully sweet, almost as sweet as the mountain dew up in the Frostlands. He gulped down so much it gave him a cough.

“Kiyo-sama? Kiyo-sama!”

The cry came from across the lake. When Jesse jogged up he saw his captor kneeling and hovering over an old man with balding white hair and a beard reaching short of his waist, donning a black ankle-length robe. He sat leaning against a lantern pole, hands fidgeting over the young man’s face.

His voice was nigh wavering. “Hanzo. Oh, Prince Hanzo, it is wonderful to see you.”

Jesse swallowed the lump in his throat. _Prince?_

Hanzo answered in their tongue. The old man narrowed his eyes at Jesse, then back at Hanzo with a rueful look. When he spoke it came out as a stream of foreign sputters, Hanzo’s balled fists tightening every now and then. Jesse stood there like a log, not knowing where to look, feeling like an intruder instead of a captive. Several times the old man nearly broke into sobs before Hanzo would rub his shoulders and offer reassuring words.

Jesse spotted a large stain on the man’s clothes. _Did he wet himself?_ But it was too far below the thigh, and too dark to be water. Too dark to be anything but—

“Sir,” Jesse said quietly. “Your leg...”

He blinked at Jesse then turned towards it sluggishly, as if just acknowledging the presence of his own limb. Hanzo lifted the robe. A neat bullet hole burned through the gray fabric on the man’s calf, caked with a gratuitous amount of dried blood the color of rust.

There was a moment where none of them said a word, and the very next an arrow was pointed at his face. Again.

“Whoa what the fuck are—”

“Get away from him!”

Jesse held his tongue and did as told. Hanzo studied him up and down with a searing look.

“You are not...provoked?”

Jesse didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. “Vampires don’t go crazy when we see blood. You have to, y’know, actually drink it.”

The old man tugged at Hanzo’s pants.

“Kiyo-sama, we need to clean—”

“What are you doing here, demon?” he asked. There was no disgust or resentment in his voice, just tiredness and curiosity shining through his jaded eyes. Jesse found himself chewing his words, the old man’s gaze unbearably heavy. _To borrow your tribe’s prized wolf, sir, and save my own sorry ass before my boss shreds me to ribbons._

“Helping Hanzo get his wolf back.”

“The witch stripped Towa of her chi, Kiyo-sama. I think.” Hanzo reluctantly lowered his bow. “The demon wishes for his life to be spared, and offers to take me to a sorcerer of Sunblades in return.”

“Sunblades? Balderich the Blessed?” He turned to Jesse with considerable vigor. “The one living near the Lake of Shards? The apothecary’s son?”

Jesse had to dig through his memory for the meaning of the word.  “I think that’s him. We found him in a shop selling herbs.”

“We have an acquaintance?” Hanzo asked.

“He helped one of our scouts with Hollow-fed poison once. A good man, and a better sorcerer.” His eyes were downcast. “And our only hope, it would seem. You must find him at once.”

“What about Otosan? And the rest? Those people could be doing any—”

“That is why you must go. What is done is done. If they haven’t yet escaped, you cannot save them with Emi alone.”

“Kiyo-sama—”

“I cannot raise the Aegis by myself. The sooner you get this done, the sooner our people can return.” He was fading, Jesse could feel it, but he managed a weak laugh when his eyes rested on Jesse.

“You, demon,” he said. “The fate of the Okami tribe rests on you. Tsukuyomi help us all.”  


*

 

The pyre burned over a roaring fire against the red dusking sky, firewood crackling over Emi’s howls that bled into the night. Jesse stood until his legs were sore, then stood some more, until the flames dwindled into a smoldering wisp.

“We should go,” he finally said.

And watched wordlessly as the dying light twinkled in Hanzo’s hard, misty eyes.


	6. The Prince

They traveled north. Jesse rode backward on Emi’s nape and bounced with her stride. It was exceptionally bouncier than anything he had ridden. Through the night he couldn’t find a posture even remotely comfortable; her neck was too narrow to lie on his back, too wide to saddle without hurting his hips, and he had enough dignity and sense to not sprawl over it like a sack of oats upon Hanzo’s suggestion. Her lower back would be ideal, he lamented, but apparently Towa had taken up her sibling’s job of snarling at him whenever he got close.

And there was no way of sleeping with those hawk-like eyes on him.

“I’m guessing I’m either the most good-looking person you’ve had the honor to meet, or the least trustworthy,” he said, yanking back his hat. Sure enough he was met by Hanzo’s watchful glare as he scratched Towa on the head. He had taken off his jacket in the heat, and tied it around his waist where his gray undershirt, uncomfortably tight, met his trousers. As ill-disposed as he was, Jesse found it increasingly difficult to look away as the fabric, gradually soaked in sweat, clung to his chest.

“Just because Kiyo-sama trusts you does not mean I do. He might think twice if he saw a demon broke into his room with a gun as well.”

“You still need to sleep, though.”

“Save your worries for yourself,” he said before looking away.

“Look, if we’re gonna go all the way to Sunblades you need an ally, not some unwitting stowaway.” _An ally that you won’t keep your eyes on twenty-four-seven._ “Hanzo, right? I’m Jesse. Jesse McCree.”

“Do not presume to call my name on a whim.”

“Alright alright, sheesh. What would you prefer? Your Highness?”

“I don’t care how you address me, but don’t expect anything back. ‘Demon’ would be a good enough title for someone like you.”

“Hey, rude.”

“Good. Learn to take a hint when someone doesn’t wish to speak.”

After the three hundredth failed attempt at a conversation Jesse decided to leave him alone, settling back to get some shut-eye with the sun beating down mercilessly. Three days without sleep left even a vampire longing for a bed. He drifted in and out of consciousness with the wolf’s rocking, the light desert breeze a lullaby of its own.

Where were they, anyway? Jesse had no way of telling, but they could be anywhere from Rekario to Old Nevada, judging by how barren it was. _Not too far to run home_. He had asked Hanzo to give him a heads-up if they came across any landmarks, but so far it had been sand and mountains and more sand. Or the man could be outright ignoring him. The thought was so discerning it cleared his head, and he sat upright to find Hanzo nibbling away at a pear he must have stuffed into his bag before leaving.

“Wow, if you’re taking someone prisoner you could at least think of feeding him?” Hunger had eluded him since this shitstorm began. Now his stomach growled, remembering his last meal at the bar while he waited for the time to pass, a baked potato with cheese that was actually decent but outrageously priced.

“You will not get any blood from me.” He pinched a small bite and held it in front of the pup, who licked it once and shoved it away.

“No shit. A fruit will do.”

Hanzo creased his brow. “A fruit.”

“You didn’t just bring one, right?”

“You eat...things?”

That had Jesse throwing back his head in laughter. When he came to himself Hanzo was flushed in what he hoped was purely embarrassment.

“Sorry, sorry. You really haven’t met much of our kind, do ya?” He took the silence as an answer. “But yes, we have to eat if we want to not die. Blood is just something vampires crave. It makes them stronger, but nothing they can’t live without.”

He raised a brow. “‘They’?”

“Now, this works both ways, don’t you think?” Hanzo sighed and tossed him a fat corn.

“I’mma start with something general because you’re not gonna answer anything specific,” Jesse said, attacking the husk with his fingers. “What was that place?”

“My home? Harunotani. The Valley of Spring.”

“Mm hmm.” Jesse took a bite. Again, criminally sweet.

“We found it two hundred years back. The tribe used to move every other decade, but the desert is quieter than most and less demon-infested, so we decided not to leave.”

“So you’re nomads?”

Hanzo nodded. “That is your word for it.”

“And no one ever found this place before Talon?”

“The witch did not find it,” he said irritably. “We had the Aegis. A veil that bends light and existence from the spirit realm. Like the one you saw, but much bigger. It protects our home, hides it from mortal eyes, makes the climate more hospitable for my people.”

“I can tell. Never seen a goddamn lake around here.”

Hanzo’s eyes veered up to him in surprise, but he carried on. “Twelve of our elders are tasked to maintain it. The veil is to be cast every month, and it was, just a few nights ago. I was there and nothing was amiss. But the night the Aegis fell the witch and her soldiers were already outside. Kiyo-sama says it was an inside job.”

“Any idea what they wanted?”

“That’s enough for my turn,” Hanzo said. “What did you mean by ‘they’? Why can’t you drink human blood?”

“Is it really this difficult to believe that a vampire doesn’t want to kill?” Hanzo narrowed his eyes while biting a chunk out of his pear. “It really is, huh. Well, my gang? Bunch of ancient vamps well into their forties and fifties when they became Hollow-fed. Got hardwired to survive pretty fast. Gotta be, with the war on demons still hot and rollin’ before the Breach was sealed. I was turned well after that. I was twenty five-ish, I think. Can’t really remember. They say your body stops aging, but I reckon we’re all stuck. And I was stuck at a place where I couldn’t bring myself to bite into someone who has a life to live without a vampire swooping in to fuck it all up the way some shit fucked up mine.”

Jesse found himself blinking when he was done, like he was waking up from a drugged episode. He looked up from his corncob long since swept clean. Hanzo stared at him, stupefied. He lowered his hat.

“Sad, eh? Can’t even do what I was made to do.” He chuckled bitterly. “You know it’s bad when even freaks think you’re the freak.”

“Not really.” Hanzo’s softer voice took him back. “Killing innocent lives is not an honorable thing. I would not be ashamed to say I never took a life, if I were you.”

Jesse blinked some more. “Oh, that I did,” he said bitterly as Hanzo glanced at him. “Ain't something I wanna remind myself of.”

They fell into silence. He tossed the cob into the sand and took a swig out of his canteen. Hanzo darted his eyes as Towa gnawed on his fingers.

“Maybe we should continue this round when we have better food,” Jesse said, leaning back and shutting his eyes for good, hoping for dreams that would take him far away, that for once would not involve a boy in a dark wooden shack.

Sleep eluded him like the plague.

 

*

 

When he saw Hanzo emerge from the other side of the hill with a handful of dead foxes, there was an unfounded fear that these people eat their stuff raw until he noticed the bundle of sticks Hanzo dragged behind him. The setting sun cast his shadow long and dense over the sand and across the tiny stream that led them to the dunes creeping with life.

“Uh...Hanzo?” Jesse said in his most polite voice when Hanzo sank down on his knees. “You mind telling Big Boss to maybe loosen up? Just a little?”

“Why? What about her?”

“Heh, well...”

He didn’t need to turn around to feel Emi’s wary eye on his back, rumbling like a truck in idle.

 

 

 

“I can only trust her to keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah, maybe not literally?”

Hanzo said nothing more, but with a grunt Emi rose to her feet and strutted to their side, sprawling down on her tummy.

Soon they had a fire started. Hanzo requested no help and Jesse offered none, watching Hanzo’s methodical hands conjure sparks and smoke from the pile of wood. Jesse volunteered his swiss army knife for the skinning, trying to avoid the sight of blood. He made Jesse hold the sticks of meat above the fire as they browned. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten something not made in a kitchen, but the charred smell made his mouth water all the same.

He found Hanzo fiddling with his knife, the blade caked in blood making a grinding sound as he dug it out of its slot and pressed it back in, before moving on to the can opener, then the corkscrew.

"Hey," Jesse cried over the fire. He found a tiny but indispensable pleasure in making Hanzo jump. "Gotta get the blood off or the knife’s gonna get stuck. Give it here. I'll wash it by the river."

"And run downstream to the people living there?" Hanzo said. "I'm not above cleaning a soiled knife." He rose to his feet and walked off.

Jesse almost felt ashamed realizing his captor had thought of more escape routes than he did. _You even sucked at being kidnapped._

Two wolves and one vampire sat around the fire and watched the barbeque silently. By the time Hanzo returned the sky had turned a honey-orange and the foxes into crisp, juicy chunks. He passed Hanzo the largest stick.

“What about you, _señorita_?” Jesse asked, waving the meat in front of Emi’s sealed eyelids. “Well-done or rare?”

"She doesn't need to eat," Hanzo told him.

"But that night you said she was hungry?"

"And the threat worked, did it not?"

Jesse threw him a stink eye and dug into his dinner. It was actually pleasant, annoyingly chewy but only a pinch of salt away from being a decent roast. Then he thought about eating this for whatever days or weeks to come and instantly lost half his appetite. Hanzo was grunting with meat in his mouth, trying to pry open the pup's jaw that was clamped shut. She growled at the chunk of fox Hanzo was holding and slapped it away.

"She can't chew that."

Hanzo looked at him, incredulous. "Excuse me?"

"She's too small to chew that," he said again, pointing at him with his pointy stick. "Baby wolves have their mommas feed them chewed-up meat. If your baby girl is anything like real wolves, which I seriously doubt, that's prob'ly why she ain't buying that." Towa barked in agreement. Jesse grinned at her. "That, or she wants someone prettier. Ain't that right, baby girl?"

Hanzo either missed the last part or chose to ignore him. He frowned at the piece of meat in his fingers. "I have to bite this and spit it out?"

"Too disgusting for your highness?" Jesse felt bold. "I could do it if you want."

"It is not, and I do not," he snapped and tossed it into his mouth. After a few seconds of dutiful chewing he spat out the tiny nugget with plain distaste. Towa gobbled it down the second Hanzo presented it to her.

"Where did you learn such a thing?"

Jesse made him wait until he finished swallowing. "I had a pet coyote before I got turned. Almost the same thing, just smaller. Got him choked a couple of times before I asked around and found out."

Hanzo looked at him until Towa pawed on his shirt for more. "I thought humans only keep dogs and cats as pets."

"Oh yeah, coyotes aren't exactly tame. My mom flipped out when she found Hank underneath my bed, but dad told her the pup couldn't survive if I stopped feeding him." Jesse smiled at the memory of tossing him mom's overcooked chicken beneath the dinner table. "I think she stopped complaining after Hank made the thief who tried to make off with our lamb bleed in three separate places."

Hanzo grunted at his story. "Towa had nothing but water for almost three days now. I was getting worried." He swallowed his first bite ever since they talked. "Hank is a weird name for an animal."

Jesse chuckled. He had to, before it turned sour in his mouth. "I named him after a stupid crush I had back then. But hell, looking back I do feel sorry for him. It's such a stupid coyote name."

"But Hank is a man's name?“ Hanzo said carefully.

"Yeah. You have a problem with that?"

"No." His voice pitched almost defensively. "It's just... I know little about your relationships. My teacher simply told me love between humans of the same gender is uncommon."

"Well, I mean, yeah." Jesse suddenly felt sorry for raising his voice. How could he know? "Back then it was. That's why it's a crush. I never told anyone I’m into guys until someone in my gang found out. I s’pose the world pretty much moved on since then." Jesse remembered his heart almost dropping out of his chest when Mariah found the magazine beneath his bunk, until he was sat down by the gang’s known mama bear and showed a sepia photo of her wife tucked in her wallet. "So the Okami people are fine with that kinda stuff?"

Hanzo seemed taken aback by the observation. He bit the inside of his cheek. "Nobody talked about it openly, that is true," he said, weighing over every word. "But it is always there as far as I can remember. I came across all sorts of romances in texts we read so I never knew there were people who were repulsed by it, until my teachers taught me about the outside world. In the tribe men walk around holding hands and ladies giggle together on their porch. Kids laugh at them, sure, but they laugh at everything couples do, same gender or no. Young people are bolder, so you have old people preaching about modesty all the time. But we never—" He caught his tongue, and quickly shielded his face with disinterest. "I don't know much besides that."

Jesse said nothing. The conversation went far too personal than he planned. Than any of them planned, apparently. He absently tore into his meat, gazing into the gentle flames.

"What happened to Hank the coyote then?" Hanzo said out of the blue.

For a moment Jesse wasn't sure if going on about their story would be the best stratagem. It won't do any harm, he decided. "Died before the vampires came, god bless. Fell sick when he was eight years old and went four months later."

"I'm sorry to hear that." He spat out another ball of meat.  
  
"Actually, you can just—" Jesse shredded a piece in his hands until they were nothing more than little threats. "—do this. It should be good enough for her either way."  
  
Hanzo pulled away when Jesse leaned in to feed the pup. Towa's mouth was already halfway open, and she whined at her master indignantly.  
  
"C'mon," Jesse said. He took his silence as a yes. The pup licked everything clean down to his fingers.  
  
Hanzo began shredding another piece. "I have a question."  
  
"Shoot."  
  
"I was told vampires cannot say the word ‘god’, or invoke anything holy. Apparently that is false?"  
  
"Let us debunk that right now." Jesse forced down his food, shifting his body to face him. "Holy shit your vampire database is outdated. These are the kind of crap people tell their kids in the last century."  
  
Hanzo actually looked embarrassed for a second. "That was what had been taught to me. I never..." He occupied himself with the bonfire that had started to whittle down into ambers. "I had never met a vampire before."  
  
"Huh. I thought the eastern desert was chock full of 'em." Jesse tried to keep his tone flat. "Back then most of the stories are just word of mouth so bunch of them are bullshit anyway. Obviously we don’t need blood, but some vampires are really hardcore about that shit so it’s understandable. The holy word taboo is absolute crap. I hear a lot about us hating garlic. Not entirely false, but if you throw a garlic at a vamp you're just gonna piss them off, not scare them away. And silver—"  
  
He gave himself a mental slap. _Did I just try to hand over our weakness to my kidnapper?_ Hanzo tilted his head inquiringly.  
  
"And silverware. Ha!" Jesse choked out a laugh. "What do they think we eat with? Wooden bowls?"  
  
Hanzo looked thoughtful. "Maybe we do have to take a look at the intel our scouts kept—"  
  
His eyes grew wide.  
  
"What?" Jesse asked, but a simple turn of his head was answer enough. A thin column of smoke rose in the distance, a poisonous red winding higher than the sun at its nadir.  
  
Hanzo sprung up and stomped out the fire. The noise roused Emi from her sleep.  
  
"The hell is that?"  
  
"Our people's smoke signal. They're in danger."  
  
"Wait," Jesse said, but Hanzo already had his belongings in his arms and scattered their firewood with a swift kick. "What if it’s one of your scouts? The last thing we want is to send ourselves straight into—"  
  
“They are color-coded. Scouts use gray smoke.”  
  
"And the red?"  
  
"My father." Hanzo leaped onto Emi’s back. “Now, if you don’t want to get hauled by the collar again, I suggest you move.”


	7. Bottom Of The River

They rolled into sight of the deserted caravan site shrouded in the heavy cowl of night. Jesse curled himself up behind Hanzo as the wind zipped past, the rim of his hat flapping wildly and slapping him in the face. He had fought for a proper seat with the threat of Emi throwing him off in her sprint. It was a much welcomed upgrade.

The fiery smoke trail showed no signs of fading. It shot into the air like a rocket trail and bloomed like a mushroom cloud on top. They found its source once they crossed a sharp, sandy hill, hidden among a tight-knit cluster of exotic tents with muted colors and puffy bun-like tops.

“I know this ain’t excellent timing, but I can’t stop thinking about something.”

“What?” Hanzo said without looking back.

“Where did you get the jacket? Don’t get me wrong, just doesn’t look like Okami fashion to me.”

“There was an entire house in Swimmer’s Alley with bizarre garments like this. I was told clothing is vital for blending in.”

“House? You mean a shop? You have the money?”

“What money?”

Jesse bit his tongue. “Never mind.”

Emi charged down the slope. The tents were very clearly ancient up close, held together by rotting ropes and slashed fabric, the interiors obscured from the moonlight. Emi’s glow touched the compound, but Jesse was almost certain he saw a faint firelight creeping from the depths.

“What are these things?”

“Maybe some traders’ caravan,” Jesse said as Emi came to a hard stop. “We had some of these showing up around the grove from time to time, selling spices and jewelry, that kinda weird shit. But they always brought their tents when they leave though.”

Jesse poked his head into the first tent before realizing how idiotic it was to barge into a tent in the middle of nowhere, and found its interior vacant.

“You sure your dad’s here?”

Hanzo pulled an arrow from his back. Towa he had set down on the ground with her sheets puffed into a bun and guarded by Emi’s paws. "There can be no one else."  
  
Jesse brought up the rear as they entered the campsite. A feeble orange light lurked in its depths, burning brighter as they stalked the lanes between the tents, casting uncanny shadows beneath their feet. A strip of torn fabric whipped at them as the wind gusted, scaring a cry out of him and almost made Hanzo loosen his bow. He gave Jesse a wilting glare. "If you are going to jump at every little breeze you should have stayed out in the open and out of my business."  
  
That gave Jesse paused. Why the hell did he even follow when he had a much safer bodyguard in Emi? But he was too jittery to cross the compound by himself now, and Hanzo had moved on. Jesse cursed and went after.  
  
The starry light danced in Hanzo's hair, framing his tense jaw and flitting eyes in a ghostly shade. He trod lightly, his bowstring drawn and unmoving. Jesse basically glued himself to Hanzo's back as they navigated towards the center of the smoke signal that had just begun to dissipate.  
  
They turned a corner where the sand was shimmering golden under the flames, and Hanzo drew a sharp breath. Jesse slinked beside him and found a large metal cylinder mounted on the ground from which red-colored vapor still wafted. A wooden lantern that would look less out of place in Hanzo's home was tied to a pole dangling above it and led their shadows on a drunken waltz as it swayed. They were right outside a tent, one that towered over the rest, where more fires gleamed through the woven fabric. Hanzo lowered his bow.    
  
"Otosan!" He rushed forward.  
  
"Hey, hold up." Jesse didn't like the sterile air this place exuded. Hanzo had already turned his ears against the world, however, and Jesse had no choice but to catch up.  
  
The two of them peered in as Hanzo lifted the curtains. The tent was similarly unfurnished and vacant, but poles were erected to support its ceiling. Lanterns adorned the perimeter and made the air all toasty. A man sat cross-legged with his back towards them, shoulders slumped against one of the poles as he faced the wall. His ebony hair was tied in a half knot like the one Kiyo-sama had worn. _A little run-down for a king_ , Jesse thought, but he knew better than to run his mouth and land himself in trouble again. _Maybe I should step outside and let father and son do their thing._  
  
But the delighted cries of reunion never came. Hanzo's face was one of perplexion and rising anger.    
  
"Why are you here?"

The man turned around, and Jesse saw it was indeed no king. He looked closer to Hanzo's age, donning a robe exactly like the one on Hanzo's bounty sketch, a tattoo running down his collarbone and hidden by the loose-fitting outfit. Under better lighting It might have been a pretty face with his sculptor's nose and dolly eyes, but the wild look in them was startling. Unkempt cowlicks bounced from his hairline, matted with sweat. The skin on his sallow cheeks were frighteningly pale. 

"Good to see you too, Han." He rose to his knees arduously. There was something Jesse found alarming in his smile.

"You alright, pal?" Jesse said. "You look like you could use a doctor."

"How relieved I am to see you unharmed." The man shuffled towards them—no, towards Hanzo. His eyes glossed over Jesse like he was made of air. "At least they made good on their word. We just need—"  
  
"Stay where you are." Hanzo raised his weapon.  
  
"I will. Whatever you say." He halted in the dead center of the tent, showing his empty palms. "But you have to listen. Have to...listen, or none of us leaves."  
  
"I will listen to what I came to learn. Where is otosan?"  
  
"I am your only chance, Han. We can leave and go far away from this desert and—"  
  
Hanzo pulled the string further back. Jesse took a step behind when he heard a soft hum as the bow strained. "I will not ask again, Ichiro."  
  
"Why do you care about that old fart so much?" Ichiro’s sleeves flailed wildly as he screamed. Hanzo backed away from his outburst. "I am standing right here and you have no words, no concerns. Nothing! Nothing mattered to you except for your insufferable dignity and your shit of a father!"  
  
A soft thunk. The arrow lodged itself on the wooden pole next to Ichiro's face. "Choose your next words wisely, Ichiro."  
  
His mania ebbed away faster than the tide and retreated behind his murky eyes full of longing. "I just want the best for you, Han. For us."  
  
"There is no us to speak of anymore," Hanzo said. "I want to know what happened to otosan, and gods forbid if you did what I fear you did."  
  
The man self-consciously patted down his hair. "I do not know what you are saying."  
  
"Why are you here, Ichiro?" Hanzo asked again, forcing every word through his teeth.  
  
"Because I am the only one who can save you, Han. The tribe takes and takes like they own your life, and they repay that by stripping away what you love. All Talon wants from you is one of your wolves." His eyes sparkled to life. "A pet for a life of freedom! Think about that!"  
  
"Talon? How did you—" Hanzo tugged on his string again, but it was his voice that threatened to break. "What did you do?"  
  
"I found ourselves another chance to start over. Is that not what you have always wanted?" Ichiro sniffled with a triumphant smile. "No one else meddling with our business, no stupid destiny to fulfill but our—"  
  
"It was you," Hanzo said, his voice running cold.  
  
"Yes. Yes it was. Now all we need—"  
  
The rest of his words bled into a cry of pain as the arrow sunk into his slipper. He dropped on the sand howling. Hanzo had charged ahead before Jesse could hold him back.  
  
" _Chikushou!_ ” He gripped his bow and whipped it across Ichiro’s face with a grisly smack. Jesse froze in place, fearing for his life if he interfered. “They took everyone because of your playing around! What I have _wanted_ ? You idiot! Kiyo-sama is dead!"

“Fuck him!” Spittle flew from his bleeding lips. “Do I need the help of outsiders if my own father had not ruined everything?” He coughed out a mouthful of red spit. The dreadful stench of blood made Jesse’s gut crawl. “And Sojiro... They said they would only take him and him only, and they lied. But at least they kept their promise on the first part. His arrogance brought this onto himself.”

Hanzo raised his bow. This time Jesse caught his wrists.

“Go on!” Ichiro said. “That is how you have always seen me, is it not? A plaything when you are bored. A punching bag would be a nice upgrade.” His eyes suddenly dilated as if in shock. “DON’T SHOOT!”

 _Who is he talking to?_ “Hanzo, you’re going to kill him.”

“A demon.” He stared into Jesse with loveless eyes. A mocking smile crept up his lips. “I see that you would settle for anything nowadays. You find him pretty, demon? Count your days. If I can’t make him give up his precious honor, you think you can be anything more than a distraction?”

Hanzo’s arm stiffened. “Let go of me.”

He almost wrenched his hands out of Jesse’s grasp, but then he felt a tingle in the air. He crashed into Hanzo and sent them sprawling on the ground before something whisked by his ears. Jesse turned to see a figure clad in black military uniform operate what looked like a carbine, but before his reflexes could kick in an arrow pierced their helmet where their nose must had been and the soldier fell to the ground with a muffled thud.

Jesse felt his stomach churn. “Oh shit, oh shit.” He scrambled up as he heard a wet squelching noise followed by another scream. Hanzo knelt, looming over Ichiro whose face was twisted in agony, a bloody arrowhead edging on his throat.

“You set us up? Hmm?”

“They are here as backup!” Ichiro spat, strands of hair now clinging on his chin. “They are going to get your wolf, one way or another. We could have done it the easy way, Hanzo. If you could only _see_.”

“You are a bigger fool than you are an ingrate if you think Talon will let you walk free,” Hanzo said. The barb pressed into Ichiro's throat choked a grunt out of him. "Maybe you won't live to find out either."  
  
Footsteps rumbled outside. "Hanzo?" Jesse called.  
  
Hanzo pulled away and left Ichiro heaving. He let his arrow fly just as another soldier barged in, hitting him right in the throat. Blood began to drip into the sand. Hanzo pulled something out of his quiver and tossed it to Jesse. It landed in his fumbling hands cold, dusty, uncocked.  
  
"You had my gun all this time?"  
  
Hanzo dunked a handful of arrows in the torch, muttering something under his breath. Green flames ignited the metal tips with a brilliant spark. He fired a flaming arrow at the next person running through the curtain, and the pile of bodies began to burn in the emerald-tinted fire with a tar-y smoke.  
  
"You're gonna burn the whole place down!" Jesse shouted.  
  
"I sure hope it does." Hanzo conjured up a white robe folded into a little square and hastily draped it over the bodies. "With enough luck they will think I had perished."  
  
Jesse was so shaken by the intruders he hadn't realized when Ichiro had clawed his way towards Hanzo, dragging behind a trail of blood.  
  
"Take me with you," Ichiro said, tugging at Hanzo's pants while Hanzo loaded his arrows. Jesse almost felt sorry at the sight of him. "They will kill me. Please, Han, for old times’ sake."

Jesse looked away, holding his gun steady. Emi’s barks reached him through the air that had grown prickly warm. The flames licked at the walls, and the dry, porous fabric caught fire in a loud swoosh.  
  
"Hanzo! We need to move!"  
  
"You should have thought of old times' sake before you laid your finger on my people and my family," Hanzo said. "Consider this a parting mercy, Ichiro-san. Tsukuyomi guide you to a better fate, wherever you wish it to be."  
  
Jesse sent a bullet through a soldier's chest, lurching at the drawback. He popped open the cylinder: three bullets more. Hanzo walked up beside him, a flaming arrow clamped between his teeth, the light in his eyes submerged beneath a furious storm. "Follow me," he said, leaving the tent.  
  
Jesse turned, seeing a stupefied Ichiro sitting on the ground. He stared at his fingers wrapped around an arrow, thumbing through its fletching as if admiring the feathers, and chuckled. A soft, broken sound. Jesse bit his lip and charged through the smoldering curtains.

More tents were alight outside. Hanzo was nowhere to be seen. Jesse ran towards the forked path where they came, only to grind his boots to a halt when a running soldier swerved onto his way. She paused, the gleaming helmet reflecting back Jesse's petrified look, before hesitantly raising her rifle. "And who the hell are—"  
  
A mist of blood sprayed from her clavicle as she crumpled to the ground. Hanzo emerged from the shadows and tore out the shaft amidst her screams. "What good is your gun for if you don't fire?"  
  
"I—"  
  
"Excuses later." Hanzo breezed past him. "Move now."  
  
Jesse followed, watching him drag his burning arrow on every surface he could find until the campsite was a blazing inferno. Both of them ended up coughing from the smoke. Jesse had to dodge the flames rolling off the tents as they ran, stumbling several times as he kicked over the pegs. Soon they came to a clearing where the campsite ended, and the empty desert was nothing more than a dark contour beneath the starless night.  
  
"Emi is over there." Hanzo turned a corner into a lane where the tents were still intact. "Stay inside. We don't want to draw attention in the open."  
  
"But—"  
  
Hanzo was already engulfed by the darkness. Jesse made a defeated sigh, lifted his sore leg off the ground—  
  
He turned towards the open plains. Hanzo had vanished ahead of him.  
  
_Maybe this is my sign_ .

Now that the escape was right within reach, his feet refused to move. This might be it, the one time his captor was too occupied and his pet too far away, and he even had his gun back. Talon’s after the wolf, Jesse reminded himself, not him. _Where to_ , he asked. _Anywhere but here,_ he said.

But Hanzo... His captor has a name now.

_A name that means nothing to you._

He saw Kiyo-sama’s face, with all the ardency of someone who held duty in higher regard than his own life. _The fate of the Okami tribe rests on you. Tsukuyomi help us all._

_Yeah, Tsuku-whatever could help you better._

He marched out his first step.

“Don’t you move!” Shouted an angry voice from his back. “Get your hands up or I’ll shoot them off!”

_Fucking hell._

Jesse did as told. The edge of freedom dangled over him one mere hill away, the wind a taunting cackle.

“Now put the gun down.”

He let the revolver spin on his index finger as he crouched. He went down slowly, keeping his head low until he saw a faltering shadow slightly off to the left behind his feet.  
  
His knee touched the ground. Anchoring on his leg Jesse spun around and emptied his barrow with three ringing shots. One grazed the left bicep of his target. The other two sailed past him and disappeared into what remained of the caravan engulfed in flames. Jesse felt his resolve fleeing right there and then, his feet paralyzed from even the mere thought of running away.

_What a stupid way to go._

The man staggered back as his arm limped to the side. "Motherfucker," he said, his lone hand wobbling under the weight of the rifle. He jerked himself back up—  
  
—and an arrow pierced through his temple with a sickening wet noise, the blow nudging his head in a tilt that could almost pass as mischievous. Jesse gagged and turned up nothing but bile in his mouth. The figure crumpled to the ground like a mannequin.  
  
The darkness flooding around him slowly gave way to a soft blue glow as he collected himself. Emi pulled up in front of him, snarling at the flames.  
  
"That gun was doing more good sitting in my quiver, apparently." Hanzo sat on Emi's back with the bow in his hands, Towa's blanket resting dangerously between his thighs. "Come on."  
  
Jesse staggered over, his legs wobbling. Hanzo helped him up. Emi burst into a sprint before he was even seated, dashing out into the desert and away from the supersized bonfire, its incandescence leaching out into the world. Jesse only dared to look behind them when he could no longer feel the heat kiss the back of his exposed neck. It was a haunting sight, the tents turning into blackened husks as a great fire raged above the horizon.

“We need to get off the road,” Hanzo said, shoving a flashlight he must have picked from a soldier into Jesse’s hands. “Rain is coming, and they will be on the lookout. 

Sure enough the low rumbling of thunder rolled off the ashen sky once they had left the caravan and its turbulent roars in the distance. Jesse remembered the little stream where they had their little picnic, and the lights that flickered from below the valley.

“I think I know a place,” Jesse said. "Remember that little town downstream? The one near the river you hunted."  
  
"You want us to go to a human settlement?"  
  
"No! Not there. That’s a small town called Oil Barrel, and the gang used to stop there all the time. A lot of businesses moved out since a raid a few years back, but we shouldn’t risk it. There's a nice little gas station halfway there that closed down. Good enough for a hideout."  
  
Hanzo considered it, then gave Emi a pat as she changed her course, plunging them into the underbelly of a steep ridge that ran all the way north.  
  
"We don't have much choice, do we?"


	8. Handshake, Reprise

"A nice little gas station, you say."  
  
When Jesse’s flashlight found its mark Hanzo made a resigned groan.

Little was the right word, not so much the rest. The gas station was as isolated from the populace as he remembered, but Jesse forgot to account for the climate wear that came with the desertion. One of its two counter windows had cracks strewn across most likely after a break-in attempt that went poorly, and a shattered glass on the other side told the story of another that didn't. The little roof over the gas pumps was intact, however, and the structure seemed none the worse for wear except for some peeled-off paint and, well, a broken window. His flashlight peered through, revealing rows upon rows of groceries that surprisingly had not turned to dust with the rest of the building. Jesse might have suggested scouring around the area for more palatable shelters, but the drizzle had grown into a sizable pour with thunder and lightning crashing around as far as the eye could reach.  
  
"I mean, it's serviceable?" Jesse squeezed an apologetic grin, as embarrassed as a kid showing off a toy to an unimpressed friend. "You have a roof, a door, and maybe even some snacks inside if we're lucky."  
  
Hanzo sighed. "Fair enough. I have no one else to blame for not tampering with my expectations."  
  
They hurried beneath the shade. Hanzo and Jesse ducked beneath the doorframe while Emi slumped beneath the roof, curling into a ball of fur and burying half her face with her tail. The rain pattered down everywhere save for the little spot beneath her neck and most of her head.  
  
"Sorry 'bout that, Boss."  
  
She gave him a look of utter distaste before going back to her nap.

 

 

One hard cinch of his blade ripped the decaying wooden door from its lock. Jesse found no luck with the ancient switches right beside the entrance, but Emi's afterglow and the flashlight in hand were more than enough to chart the hazy interior. Their steps, cautious as they were, set off a tide of dust that made Hanzo flinch. He lifted the jacket to his nose and bundled Towa up, waiting on the doorstep as Jesse reached over to fumble with the window latches and swing them open.  
  
The clouds had enough of its pent-up doldrums and decided to shower for real. Rain cascaded in sheets, drumming on the metal ceiling and drowning out even the sharpest of Towa's frightened cries while Hanzo tried his best to rock her into a lull.

Jesse sifted through the half-empty racks, tossing aside everything that wasn't food, and ended up tossing everything. Someone else had raided the goods and left behind treasures like dish drops and loofahs, and a complimentary box of scent pads. The one bag of chips he found behind a drawer deflated under his touch. There was a large packet labeled 'custard pie' that could be a portal to the Hollow if the black bloated mass inside was anything to go by. In his despair he dug around the counter and found three credits beneath the rusted register, and cussed out loud when he realized one of them was dented.

Hanzo sat in the hallway leading outside, where the faint blue light bounced off the metal racks and scattered across the walls. When Jesse flicked off his flashlight and dropped on the cement floor his butt sent another cloud of dust flying, but Hanzo merely fanned them away. They sat there in silence, Hanzo busy wiping off the dampness on Towa's fur and Jesse flipping the chips in his hands, the thunder easing into the distance and soothed the rain into a noisy but not unpleasant ambiance. A good time for contemplating how he landed himself in this steaming mess.  
  
But he remembered his encounter with a rifle to the face, his chest mounted by a numbing fear as he stood in the open with an unloaded gun and everything ablaze. He never felt so close to death since—  
  
Since the dark wooden shack.  
  
And here he was, sitting shoulder to shoulder with the man who pointed death right in his eyes, and killed someone else who did the same. _He needs you alive_ , he reminded himself, ever the voice of reason. But still.  
  
The blue light flickered. Jesse craned his neck to find Emi stirring, whipping her tail drowsily before stuffing it beneath her snout.  
  
"Must've been a pain, bringing them places." He let his soaked stetson fall into his lap.  
  
Hanzo looked up, dazed, before blinking away the fog in his eyes. "What?"

"Emi. And Towa. You just park two giant wolves outside buildings like limos?"  
  
Instead of answering Hanzo set Towa down on the floor between them and went to work with his hair, tugging the band free. The flurry of white tumbled down and plastered itself on his neck. “No. I don't have to.”  
  
"Sooo..."  
  
"The wolves are not tethered to the mortal realm. They come and go as they please, residing in the spirit realm to rest and return when summoned. This," Hanzo gestured to Towa with a tip of his head, his wet hair billowing under the weight. "Is a side effect, if you will. Emi couldn't enter the spirit realm ever since the ritual. I'm guessing that Towa's state binds them both here."  
  
"So they can just disappear?"  
  
"If I want them to. That is how they interact with the physical world, in a way. Bullets and arrows just fly past them because those things didn’t exist in the spirit realm. They can stand on places and bite things and carry people only because they chose to."

“And all this is the work of that Tsuku...”

“Tsukuyomi.”

“Tsuku-yow-mei. Right.” Jesse tried to keep his face straight.

“Yo-mee.”

“You-mee.”

“Close enough.” Hanzo shrugged. “The god of the moon. Legend has it the Okamis are his direct descendants.”

“A ‘he’, huh? People around here always see the moon as a lady.”

“Yes, I have learned about the westerners’ rather...” he narrowed his eyes, perhaps looking for something less offensive. “...rigid ideals of femininity. But yes, the wolves are his gift to my ancestor, a companion and protector for the leader of the tribe. With some exceptions, all those born into my family are granted a wolf since birth.”

Jesse scratched Towa’s head. “And how many lucky bastards had two wolves?”

Hanzo smirked. “One lucky bastard.”

  
Jesse tsked dismissively. Hanzo opened his mouth but it came out as a sneeze instead. Jesse reached inside his back pocket and dug out two towel rolls he had found on the counter. He unlaced the ribbons, swatted off the dust, and tossed them into Hanzo's arms. "You’re gonna catch a cold."  
  
The towel laid open in his palms. His eyes were hidden behind those matted ropes, but Jesse saw him chewing his lips. "Thank you," Hanzo finally said.  
  
That should have been good enough for Jesse. Maybe _you're welcome_ , if he was feeling amiable. He should have sat back and closed his eyes and waited out the rain. Instead the words came bubbling up from the void in his gut and rolled off his tongue: "Are you okay?"  
  
“Yes. My hair was not as thick as it looks. Towa only got a little spray—”

“No,” Jesse insisted. “Are _you_ okay?”  
  
Slowly, almost timidly, Hanzo met his eyes. They gleaned a dark, turbulent gray that Jesse caught himself drowning in, clouded with a sorrow that boiled and surged and never seemed to surface. The sharp edges of his face grew taut, and suddenly the features that made him look regal and ancient burned away to reveal a boy who looked like he just fell and scraped his knees. Hanzo looked worn, beaten. Brittle.  
  
A bolt of thunder shattered the air, and the boy disappeared behind those eyes again. But Jesse held his gaze until he was certain the storm had cleared, if only a little.

“I’m fine.”

Jesse waited.  
  
"It’s just laughable," Hanzo said quietly. "They taught us history before we could even walk, drilling into our heads the art of war and philosophies, looking down on civilizations laid to the ground by turncloaks and infighting like we had heeded those lessons as common sense, and look where we are now. An entire tribe of demigods brought down by a traitor. If the Okami were lost with Ichiro's one stroke of stupidity, people would sing songs of mockery until the end of days." He regarded Jesse with a look of self-pity. "And I could not even exact justice for my people. You must think me a coward."  
  
"I don't." Jesse chewed over his words as Hanzo looked away dismissively. "I have no right too, anyway. But someone once told me that killing is a low road to walk on."  
  
"I was talking about killing the innocent. There is nothing innocent about that fool. Perhaps now my hands are as dirty as his are."  
  
"You're the prince, not the executioner. I ain't from royal blood but I know you aren't supposed to bear everything on your own." Jesse breathed into his hands. "No one is supposed to."  
  
They listened to the rainfall, a cacophonous ebb and flow timed by the rhythm of Emi's sleepy purrs. Towa crawled out of her sheets and began sniffing around. Jesse waited for Hanzo to scoop her back to her spot but he just sat there, nothing and a thousand things flashing through his meandering gaze.  
  
"What happened to Ichiro?" he asked warily.  
  
Hanzo broke from his languor and sniffled, and occupied himself with his hair.  
  
"I mean, it’s just me being nosy, don't worry if—"  
  
"We were together. Once." Water stains appeared on the towel as Hanzo began working through his wet hair.  
  
"Yeah. That much I gathered."  
  
His eyes dropped to the ground. "I'm... sorry. For lying to you earlier."  
  
Jesse had to blink back his surprise. Of all the things he had worked himself up to hear an apology was not one of them. "Well, uh. I can't blame you. Really. It's not an easy thing to entrust a stranger with."  
  
"But you did," Hanzo said with a thin smile. "When you said you like men you said it with so much ease, and pride. And I thought to myself, I was defeated by a demon just that easily. I would give anything to be able to confront myself like that."  
  
Jesse spun towards him and hugged his knees. "But you said the Okami had no problem with it."  
  
"Oh, _they_ don't, because they were not born into the burden of passing the family bloodline and had words like legacy and tradition and _duty_ drilled into every principle they grew to live by." He drew a breath deeper than the bottom of his lungs, and the rattling came out a worrying sound. “My family was so concerned about making sure I learn to be the successor they wanted, but they could not make me unlearn who I love. Maybe Ichiro was right. Maybe this is my punishment and theirs."  
  
"He was the reason your family found out?"  
  
"The age-old tale." Hanzo chuckled mirthlessly. "A cliché. That is what you people call it, yes? The passionate, lowly civilian falls in a forbidden love with the spoiled prince, and is banished by the ruthless king into exile. He either ends up the villain who descends into madness or the hero of the tale who eventually wins back their heart. I have no doubt which one Ichiro is. But the prince? The prince is always the asshole. The one who is all looks and no brains and cannot pull his shit together."  
  
"Hey, hey, whoever said you are all looks and no brains clearly hasn't seen you ambushed by an entire party of Talon soldiers and still kicked the shit out of ‘em, alright?" Jesse said. "The looks part could be argued but hey, confidence is key."  
  
A quiet laugh slipped from Hanzo’s mouth.  
  
"You think your duty lies with your family, but they can't live out their dreams and regrets through you, if that makes sense. You are risking everything you've got to fight for your people. That is what the world will remember you by, not how many children you had or how honorable your family name is." The words escaped him in a rush. "No offense to your old man, but screw what he said. Right now, I'm saying you owe no one no damn apology."

Jesse was taken aback by himself when he was done, all wound up and breathless. Hanzo's fingers were still caught between his hair as he combed down the tangles non-committedly.  
  
"I mean," Jesse sputtered. "I had no idea what really went down, I can't—"  
  
"That's the gist of it," Hanzo said softly, wrapped his hands around his knees the way Jesse did. The look he had was too pensive to be a smile but coming close. "I can't believe I am taking advice from a demon. But that is good advice, so I will be taking it anyway. Thank you, Jesse."  
  
He couldn't stop himself from grinning. "You actually said it."  
  
"What?"  
  
"My name. You said 'thank you Jesse'."  
  
"No, I said 'thank you wussy'." Hanzo looked away, the flush on his pale cheeks almost shrouded by the blue light outside the door.  
  
"Whatever you say, your highness."  
  
"Learn to take a compliment and leave it alone. I don't always—"  
  
They were interrupted by Towa's yelps as she bounced around Hanzo's feet. When she caught their attention she dashed off to the other side of the room and pawed at the side of a metal rack.  
  
"You found something?" Jesse leaped to his feet. The metal rack itself housed nothing but cobwebs, but he gave its base a kick and realized it was not bolted down. After lifting Towa out of the way he shoved himself against the rack, hoisting it to the side to reveal a trapdoor as tall as his waist.  
  
"There couldn't be anything alive inside, could there?" Hanzo grabbed Towa into a protective squeeze.  
  
Jesse leaned his ear against the wood and heard nothing. He grabbed his unloaded six-shooter. "Guess we'll have to find out."  
  
Biting his lip he yanked the ring open as more dust spewed like fleeing bugs. He couldn't see inside the tiny closet until he switched on his flashlight, and heard Hanzo's gasp before his eyes could adapt to the sudden flash.  
  
"Well, fuck me sideways."  
  
A gleaming array of guns lay against the closet wall with boxes of ammunition piled on the ground. Rifles, machine gun, more rifles, a sawed-off shotgun. He swept the flashlight around to discover a first aid kit and an airtight bag of rations on the side.    
  
Jesse immediately crawled inside, fumbling through the boxes. "Please let there be point thirty-eights. Please let there be point thirty-eights. Pleasssssse."  
  
"Tell me we are not bringing these along," Hanzo said.  
  
"If you wanna fight an armada, maybe. Truth is I don’t know how to use most of these." Jesse dug through a box with bullets too large, and tossed them aside. Towa wormed between his knees, snatched the bag of rations and returned to her master with an excited spring in her steps.

Jesse hurled the last box aside and was so very tempted to smash every last piece of firearms into splinters. "A whole hangar of weapons and not. One. Goddamn. Point thirty-eight."  
  
"And what are these?"  
  
He shone his flashlight on the bag Hanzo was holding. Sealed in a plastic bag were some dried fruits and packets of—  
  
“Ha!” He picked up a Twinkie that sat puffy and golden in its package. "Haven't seen these in a while."  
  
"These are... cakes? They are not spoiled?"  
  
"These sons of bitches could survive a nuclear war." He tossed it back to Hanzo. "You go on and try one."  
  
He pinched the plastic between his fingers, poking it with his finger. Jesse tried not to let his disbelief show.

"You've never opened a plastic bag."

He plucked it from Hanzo's hands before he could pop the whole thing with his fist, tore down a strip of the edge, and handed it back. Hanzo took a skeptical whiff, bit into the finger of cake, and spat it into his palm while crinkling his nose. Jesse hurt his ribs laughing.  
  
"How many others have you poisoned with this thing?" Hanzo said between gulps from his canteen.  
  
"Give it some slack. You have a hardened survivor in your hand." Jesse slumped back down, digging inside the bag for the dried fruits. "That, is called a pun. You have to know what it means 'cause real people are gonna think you're being rude if you didn't laugh."  
  
"What real people?"  
  
"People outside of your little flower garden, I mean."  
  
"No, I don't know what you mean." Hanzo grabbed the vile twinkie out of Towa's reach. "I know what real people—"  
  
"You've never left home, have you?"  
  
Jesse watched his puzzlement give way to panic, then plain acceptance as a backhanded amusement settled on his face. He exhaled deeply. "You can tell just from the cake?"  
  
"Oh it’s a long time coming, pal." Jesse passed him a wrinkly date which he popped into his mouth without question. "What kind of person doesn't know how to use money, lives in the desert but has never met a vampire, and has never seen a swiss army knife? I mean, still understandable, so I thought, 'eh, he's just holed up in his palace most of the time'. But then something bugged me ever since you saved my life at the campsite. Much appreciated, I can assure you, but why exactly am I so important?"  
  
"You are my guide?"  
  
"Sure, if you're a tourist or a local trying to get to Sunblade in one piece. Someone who has a killer bow, knows survival stuff like making fires and hunting, and has a spirit wolf at his disposal? Nuh-uh." Jesse realized his fingers were steepled in one of his supreme asshole postures again, and self-consciously placed them on his sides. "I kept thinking about Kiyo-sama's words. Why did he take me so seriously if you already know where to look? "The fate of the Okami tribe', he said. Not something one would throw around lightly unless you physically couldn't make it on your own. Connecting the dots from there and..." He snapped his fingers.  
  
Hanzo was quiet. Jesse glanced over to find his jaw hanging, the bizarre look soon erupting into a loud chortle. It was an unseemly sound coming from someone with his poised demeanor, but Jesse found relief in that. The self-loathing man sitting next to him just moments ago had slipped away into the shadows.  
  
Hanzo quickly composed himself. "That was a most entertaining display. I was still in doubt whether it was sheer luck that brought you to my hiding spot in Swimmer's Alley, but apparently you people are terrifying creatures when it comes to the brain.”  
  
"I'm gonna take that as a compliment and leave it alone," Jesse said. "But damn. I never wanted myself to be wrong until now. You've been there for centuries?"  
  
"I told you, the family and duty stuff were not messing around. Couldn't risk having the prince out in the open, anyhow." Hanzo pursed his lips. "When my brother was born, there were... accidents. It made my father cautious, but I suppose paranoid would be the better word. I've ventured from home, once. Moving from the old to the new when we found the valley. Not a step outside since then. My life was one of familiar faces and a never-ending spring, and I could only get snippets of the outside world from our scouts. Even then they are hesitant. It would not be out of character for my father to withhold things from me, in case the precious heir gets all tempted by the hustle and bustle of the world."  
  
"And you're fine with that?"  
  
"I really shouldn't, come to think of it. Maybe someone like you should have come along and fanned the flames of rebellion in the youths. You are what my father would call a bad influence." He chuckled. "Must be the weirdest thing, a full-grown adult having never seen the world outside of books."  
  
"That's far from the weirdest thing, trust me." Knowing that he embarked on this journey with the twisted purpose of introducing the world to Hanzo gave him some solace. "Where we're going? I wish it could be my first time seeing it all over again."  
  
"Something to look forward to at last," Hanzo said. "You know, I never thought talking about these things could be easy until now."  
  
"Because you're free from your family for the first time?"  
  
"Because you are not as intolerable as I thought you were." Hanzo smiled and immediately left Jesse and his stomach full of butterflies to their own devices. "You should get some rest. I have some matters to think about."  
  
Jesse didn't protest. Despite everything he fell into the embrace of unconsciousness against the hypnotizing rainfall, his dreams a comforting void. No crying, no wooden shack, just him falling asleep next to Hanzo and his two wolves until come morning light with its stark grays and vivid yellows, and the taste of Towa’s fur in his mouth reminiscent of vanilla and chewing gum.


	9. The World on a String

The truck pulled over with a hiss and a resounding groan.   
  
"That's your stop?"   
  
Jesse waited for the window to wind down before sticking his head out, flinching at the brisk wind. Beyond the stone-paved plaza with more monuments and fountains than people he spotted the palace sticking out of the horizon, its dizzying lights of red and gold shimmering in the night like a mirage. "Rocket 69", the unsubtle LED sign read, complete with the raunchy image of a lady in a spacesuit riding on a flashing red rocket and the staple logo of dices and gambling chips.   
  
"Correcto," Jesse said, putting on his hat. "Thanks a ton, Mister Gonzalez."   
  
"You sure you kids are fine going in alone?" The old man wagged his mustache as he adjusted his posture, Hanzo nudging away uncomfortably at the shuffling of his butt. "I don't think they'll let that dog of yours in either."   
  
"It's just a quick dip inside to get my friend. No gambling."   
  
"That's what kids always say," he muttered. "You two be safe, a’ight?"

After they got off they stood at the side of the road as the engine purred, country music blaring through the window. Jesse eyed the trailer hovering over the road. Emi was still sprawled comfortably on top, unmoving save for her tail swaying off the edge.

“Hanzo?” Jesse poked him in the elbow. “Wake her up?”

“I’m trying!” Hanzo flexed his telepathy muscle with a frown, but Emi wouldn’t bat an eye.

“Something wrong?” Mister Gonzalez shouted through a crack in the window.

“Nothing!” Jesse quickly snapped on a wide grin. “Just wanna see you off, that’s all!”  
  
"Bah, you go on and get your errands done before it gets dark." He rolled the window back up as the truck left its spot, still carrying its glowing cargo. Hanzo creased his brows so hard they almost popped off his forehead until Emi reached her front paw to the ground and lazily slithered her way down. The trunk floated along like it had unloaded nothing but air and disappeared down the road.   
  
"I won't bother waiting for you the next time you pull a stunt like that," Hanzo said as Emi trotted back to them, annoyed. Towa poked her head out of her sheets and yawned on cue. Jesse was sympathetic to the wolves. The slow procession of the truck and the cool autumn breeze was enough to make anyone drowsy.

"See?" He stretched with a force that nearly popped his arm out of its socket. "Here without a scratch."  
  
"The man seemed kind enough," Hanzo said begrudgingly. "But I wouldn't count on it. Trapping yourself in a moving carriage with a stranger will never not be one of the stupidest thing you can do."   
  
"And to think your family worried so much about your safety. I’d worry more about the rest of us."   
  
"The vehicle smelled of soiled clothes, too." Hanzo sniffed his sleeve and wrinkled his nose. "Where are we heading now?"   
  
Jesse pointed at the casino with its dazzling light display, the temple-like frame cutting a beguiling outline in the sky. It was unrecognizable to Jesse without the sign, but thirty years was a long time to expect a locale in business to stay the same.

It was more than enough to make Hanzo's mouth gape, however. "That must be bigger than the valley put together. And the lights... People just trade and play games in a place like this?"  
  
That was the only explanation Jesse could give for his understanding to grasp. He still remembered the look on Mister Gonzalez's face when Hanzo referred to their destination as 'the playground' and he had to make the most hideous sound to change the topic. "Sorta. And drink and eat and bunch of other stuff you don't need to know. "   
  
"You are certain the person you're looking for is inside?"   
  
Jesse pressed down his hat as they stepped on the sidewalk. "Sure hope so. We're gonna be taking one hell of a detour if he isn't."   
  
"Let's get to it, then." Hanzo adjusted his jacket and puffed up his chest spiritedly.   
  
"Yeah, about that..." Jesse gripped his shoulder. "It might not be the best idea if we march right in."   
  
"Why?"   
  
"Well, places like this can't let you in if you're bringing along dogs or cats."   
  
Hanzo frowned. "But she is a wolf."   
  
"Not exactly tamer than the other two, you’d find."   
  
"What a stupid rule," he scoffed. "I say we do it before anyone notices."   
  
That earned him a laugh. Jesse found his naïveté an enviable thing. "Yes, because the receptionist and dealers and the heap of guards walking around are all blind in one eye." At Hanzo's unmistakable disappointment, "Well, I suppose we can always come back for a visit once all of this is over, right?"   
  
"I am not a child. You do not have to console me." They stopped in front of an illuminated fountain which Hanzo marveled at all the same. "You think it’s wise if we just sit here in the open?"   
  
"If they ain't Hollowed all they'd see is a man with his dog. If they are... they'd carry on if they’re still looking to have a good time here."   
  
"And if it is our pursuers catching up?" Hanzo asked. Emi stopped scratching at her ear and whinnied at them.   
  
"I won't take that long."   
  
Jesse prayed he won't, either.   


*

 

The glitter and gold blindsided him as he left the evening gloom and through the heavy-set aluminum doors. An outrageous chandelier greeted the entrance, little gems of light dancing off its prismatic shards onto the red carpet. The walls were covered in a sparkly champagne gold coating. Its interior was just as unrecognizable after a much classier facelift, the gentle lighting and soft jazz in the background somehow fueling Jesse's anxiety worse than its rowdy predecessor.   
  
The greeting desk sat in the middle of the vestibule, a round counter attended by four full-colored holograms suited in red. The lady with a bob cut smiled at him as he approached.   
  
"Good evening and welcome to the Rocket 69," she said brightly. "May I have your identification for verification purposes?"   
  
Jesse leaned against the icy countertop, trying to focus on her attentive eyes and not _through_ them, where a male hologram was talking into a microphone. He squeezed his friendliest smile, wiping a sweaty palm on his jeans. "That won't be necessary, Mizz…” He glanced at her tag. “...Shirley. I'm just here to see an old friend. Is Mister Lasnaud available?"   
  
Shirley blinked. "I'm sorry sir, there are no records of any services or staff personnel named Mister Lasnaud in the database. However, I must insist on your identifications, as all attractions and services in the Rocket 69 are age-restricted. If you are unqualified to enter, we will be glad to have you back once the issue is resolved."   
  
"There must be a mistake." Jesse peered towards the depths of the hall. "Maybe he just doesn't want to see anyone yet. I can wait."   
  
"I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave, sir." Shirley gave him an apologetic smile, a red bell icon floating next to her face. "The security will be here to escort you shortly."   
  
"Wait wait wait!" He drew a deep breath, praying that his memory would not screw him over. "Uh...I need to get a zipper for my, uh… for my windbreaker."   
  
Shirley stared at him blankly. Then a knowing grin crept up her face and she said, "I'm afraid our tailor is out for business today. Her father caught ill."   
  
"That's a shame. She promised me a bouquet of red roses the next time I visit."   
  
The bell icon disappeared.   
  
"Welcome back to the Rocket 69, Mister McKinney. The owner will be expecting you."   
  
She rang the real bell on the desk, her immaterial fingers making it ding with more techno voodoo. A holo-man in a tuxedo emerged from behind and bowed past him. "This way, sir."   
  
_Is there anyone living that still works here?_

Jesse tailed behind him, thoroughly spooked by the entire exchange. They walked up a set of spiraling steps, through a hallway of glass elevator doors, and down another flight of stairs before they were inside the casino. The patrons were understandably thin in the off-season, with only a handful of card tables in use and several guests scattered among the slot machines.   
  
The crowded lights began to hurt his eyes. Even the air smelled thickly of riches and wasted time and just the right amount of luck to make every gambler think they could be the one walking away victorious. So far all Jesse could see were faces bored and troubled and furious.   
  
They passed wordlessly by an unoccupied corner of out-of-service roulette wheels where a holographic female dealer blinked in and out of existence. Heated taunts came from the pokers tables on the other end of the hall. His chaperone stopped in front of a handleless door of pink frosted glass. "Do excuse me for a moment, sir," he said, and disappeared into a laser beam in front of a monitor on the wall. _At this point this might as well happen,_ Jesse thought, examining his embarrassingly underdressed self in front of the glass.   
  
An enraged cry. An enormous man dressed in black rose from his seat by the poker table, cursing. It took Jesse a hard, long stare before he spotted the tell-tale canine teeth of a werewolf in the man's snarl. Jesse veered his face away until his fuming steps had traveled down the hall. The thinly-clothed hologram of a blonde girl appeared to offer her apologies to the other gamblers (how the fuck?) and sort out the mess ( _how the fuck?_ ). The guests leaned back into their chairs as their chips and cards were cleared away.   
  
One of them, a middle-aged white man with a disfigured left cheek, looked straight at him.   
  
Jesse felt a jolt down his neck. _He sees me._ So what? He just got his table flipped by a werewolf. _Maybe it's my clothes._   
  
But his stare lingered too long, and too probing. The man leaned forward on his shiny black walking stick. Jesse didn't know how to break his glance without looking guilty. _Guilty of what, even?_ _  
_

But his kind host saved him of the trouble. The door slid apart into a hallway with a low ceiling and sleek black marble floor. Jesse marched right in without a second glance. There was an heavy air of detachment once the panels closed behind him with the bland music muffled and replaced with white noise that felt unsettlingly meditative. He cleared his throat and walked down the corridor.  
  
Jesse couldn't remember if there was a bar the last time he visited. Sounds of kitchenware and a low scratching noise emanated from the depths. He pushed open an ordinary glass door into a fancy little bistro, furnished with a handful of samite couches without a single occupant. The entire place was empty, in fact, save for a single person bartending behind the impressive display of liquor bottles washed in a purple neon glow. The scratching soon gave way to a soft piano chord just as Jesse spotted the ancient record player sitting in the corner, a baritone soon billowing out of its brass horn.   
  
The person behind the counter pouring drinks was dressed ambiguously; a charcoal leather jacket over a lace top and waist-high red lounge pants, sporting a fierce buzz cut with a sharp, smoky makeup, a teardrop diamond dangling from one ear. They—Jesse wouldn't make assumptions this early—paid him no attention, bottles tall and round passing their hands in a blur until they dropped an olive into the glass with a pleased smile. 

“Mister McKinney!” They hollered with a voice skewing female. “What wind brings you to the Rocket this time of year?”

Jesse had a feeling an untruth would not work in his favor here. "It isn't McKinney. I'm just his gang member. McKinney's—"  
  
"Dead, by the hands of that nasty new boss of yours." They looked up and met Jesse's eyes. "Yeah, I know. Just checking if you're trying anything stupid."   
  
"Can I see Mister Lasnaud? It's pretty urgent."   
  
"Take a seat." The bartender patted the countertop where metal chairs were installed. "Get you anything to drink?"   
  
Jesse grabbed his hat. "No thanks. I really shouldn't get drunk right now."   
  
"A virgin mojito, then." They immediately pulled up more bottles from beneath the desk and went to work. “And what business do you have with Lasnaud?”   
  
"I'm getting some ammo, and someone I can trust to ask around things."   
  
"Huh. Your boss is making a poor kid deal with suppliers alone? What a bitch." The clinking of ice falling on glass. "So what's the deal?"   
  
"Two boxes of point thirty-eights."   
  
The noises stopped. _Seriously?,_ their baffled eyes seemed to say.   
  
"It's just for personal use. Mister Lasnaud is my only contact around here, so..." Jesse watched them expectantly. "Help a long-time customer out?"   
  
"We don't do retail, son," they said with pursed lips. "But if you could get something else we can just throw them in."   
  
"I don't need any—"   
  
"You sure?" The shaker made a loud rattling sound. "Your friend could use a new bundle of arrows from what I see."   
  
It struck him like a fist to the gut. The song crooned on in the background, oblivious as it lamented the lover standing on golden sand and watching ships. "What friend?" Jesse managed to cough up.   
  
"Why, you can't seriously be thinking you're gonna park a giant glowing wolf right outside the Rocket without anyone seeing, right?" She pointed out the window that ran across the entirety of the wall on their right. From Jesse's vantage point he could only see the unbroken night sky. He hoisted himself up on the counter, and didn't even need to peer down to find Emi sticking her nose into the fountain. Hanzo sat on the bench beside him, as tiny as a thumb, taking in the establishment with wide eyes and a wider mouth. What little passers-by passed by without sparing a second look.

“You’re Hollowed?”  
  
The bartender poured out Jesse’s mojito, garnishing it with a stalk of mint. “You see, you’re not exactly being sneaky here. Now now, keep that six shooter where it belongs. I’m on your side. If, there’s even sides to talk about.” They slipped out from behind the bar with two glasses in hand. "If we're gonna keep it that way, I'll need you to tell me everything, starting from why you tagging along with a wolf that you're supposed to be hunting down."   
  
Jesse froze at the demand, then came to his senses. "With all due respect, why should I? I'm here to see Mister Lasnaud."   
  
"I'm afraid you'll have to settle for this, son." They set the drinks down, one fizzy mojito and another glass with a toxic-looking red, and slipped onto the couch next to him. "Name's Clementine. Clem, if I don’t hate you. Best Bloody Mary chef in the states, owner of the Rocket 69."   
  
"Owner? What do you mean, owner? Where's Lasnaud?"   
  
"Son of a bitch got himself arrested. So I'm keeping tabs on the Rocket and his firearms business for him, in the... unlikely case that he walks out of prison alive."   
  
"And who are you? His daughter, or son? His lover?"   
  
"Getting a little nosy, are we?" They smirked. "But you’re respectful for a kid your age, I’ll give you that. Back to my question now. Why are you with this man?"   
  
"I was kidnapped," he said without thinking and immediately regretted. "But what matters now is that we’re trying to head north. I was hoping Mister Lasnaud could point me in the right way."

“And where would that be?”

Jesse kept quiet.

“Alright. I'm gaining nothing from this, but since you have my curiosity piqued, you win.” Clementine held her phone facing up in his lap and swiped through the screen until Hanzo's hologram came up. It aged poorly in Jesse's eyes: the nose should be taller, the jawline sharper, his eyes ever burning in its intensity. They still haven't updated his clothes in the sketch, and Jesse only came to realize how much older he looked with his hair down. "This is your friend on the bounty list, correct?" Seeing Jesse had no intention to confirm nor deny, Clem continued, "It was taken off the grid last week just three hours after it was published. And guess what popped up in my mail just two days ago?"  
  
Hanzo vanished in a click then reappeared as a smaller copy, but he was joined by another figure, in glorious color high-definition. Jesse's heart sank to his stomach.   
  
"Looks familiar?" Clem flicked Jesse's image around, his hat turning dizzily on its axis. Jesse couldn't remember when he had taken that holovid. "Your boss sent this to every business place in the area which, lucky for you, isn't an awful lot. Also lucky for you she didn't mention a reward anywhere, or you'd be in a truck tied with a ribbon and on your way back to the grove by now. Pass me my drink, please."   
  
Jesse handed them the glass. There was something sharp beneath the earthy smell of tomato juice as it passed under his nose. "Why are you telling me this?"   
  
"Spite, perhaps." Clem took a sip. "McKinney was always a good friend to Lasnaud. The old man flipped out when he heard about the duel. Your boss seemed like a real bitch from what I've seen of her floating around, too. I'd rather help someone I don't know if it means pissing her off. You're not drinking that?"   
  
Obediently Jesse gulped down a mouthful of the admittedly refreshing mocktail, and wiped his mouth.

Clem set down their glass and crossed their legs. “Now you know I'm trying to help. If you still don’t wanna tell me about your little getaway, I understand. But you know you're not going back to your gang, right?”  
  
Jesse clenched his fist, his palms still slick from the water on the glass. He had been keeping the question out of his head, but now it seemed the question had found its way to him. "No. I…  I don't know."   
  
"You do. I just want you to tell me why."   
  
"The killing," Jesse said. Why he would confess to this person he had known for ten minutes was beyond him. _She could be lying about everything_ , a voice warned him, but the words continued to slip from his tongue like it was muscle memory. "I can’t live a life killing people for their blood. Vampire or human, it shouldn't be an excuse."   
  
Clem made a dismissive snort. "Spoken like a true vampire cub. Every vampire thinks its an ideal they can hold on to, until you had your first kill—"   
  
“What makes you think I haven't?” Jesse could feel his temper rising. "You think my boss never made me just because I said no? McKinney was second-in-command for my first hunt, and if Nash hadn’t died right after that I’d be kicked out already. You'd think I'd forget? I had a fucking _teenager_ . You bite into his neck and feel that warm bitter taste in your mouth and get other people's blood running through your veins, and everyone only says about how fucking great it felt, ain’t nobody said nothing about that disgusting feeling after—"   
  
“—like you just winked out someone's life for nothing but a little high, and you could still feel them coursing through your body to remind you of your depravity?” 

A devastating silence ensued. Clem’s eyes were downcast as they rubbed the back of their shaven head. “Trust me, Jesse McCree. I know it all too well.”

"But your teeth—"  
  
“Regular filing. A simple procedure, really, but it throws everyone off the loop.” Now that Jesse looked, _really_ looked, those powdery cheeks are too even to be simply foundation. Clem lifted their glass for a large swig under Jesse's horrified stare.   
  
"What's in that Bloody Mary?"   
  
Clem shrugged. "Mary's blood, I’d say." Their eyes grew distant and hazy. Whether from the memory or the alcohol, Jesse couldn't say.   
  
"I have to say, I envy your resolution." The holograms disappeared with a swipe. "The only kind of person vampires despised more than someone with a moral code is someone who can't stick to one. I've killed several times before my gut told me to stop. The act of killing disturbs me, but blood? That I may have acquired a taste for. The Anarchist isn't as big of a stickler for rules as Deadlock, but I know I couldn't go back to lamb's blood after getting a taste for the exquisite, so I left." Clem looked up, a grin spreading across their face. "And look where I am now."   
  
Jesse bit his lip, feeling the points dig into skin.   
  
"We've all been brainwashed, son." Clem plucked an olive out of the glass and rolled it in their fingertips. "They make us think that vampires stick in a group or vampires die, and that's how the ambitious rise to power. If you're sure the life you're seeking lies outside that little grove of yours, grow some balls and walk away. The world isn't kind to freaks like us, but we have all the time in the world, don't we?"   
  
"That's the problem, isn't it?" Jesse said quietly. "Trying to escape, but having no fucking idea what is there to look for. What's even left for us out here?"   
  
"Ah, the age old question. It all comes down to what makes you want to stop running away, doesn’t it?" The glass of red swirled in their hand. “You could get with a group of people who accepts you for who you are. You could find somewhere so beautiful you just want to make it your own and never leave. You could fight your way to the top of a food chain and just watch the little world you reign over bow beneath your feet,” Clem said with a smirk as they tipped back their head, but then, almost deliberately, their eyes darted to the window behind them. “Or it can be as simple as finding someone who comes into your life and makes the sky light up with just their eyes.”

A single face floated up the depths of his mind, and Jesse was so confounded that his gasp came out as a strangled hiccup. He quickly downed what was left of his mojito.

“But that’s your cross to bear, eh?” Clem winked at him. “I won’t sell you out if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s always somewhat comforting to learn that there are still vampires out there with a conscious from time to time. It won’t clear our bad name, but at the end of everything at least some of us can stand up and say they tried.”

Clem finished their drink, and the stain on their lips bothered Jesse more than he could articulate. “I’ll ask someone to prepare your ammo and arrows, but keep the money,” Clem said. “Consider it paid by indulging me in this rather enlightening evening. If you aren’t in any particular hurry, you should stay for the night. The Frostland gets outrageously cold these days, and the rooms are pretty much empty anyway. Your furry friend could stay in the garage if it suits them. My men can show you the way come morning.”

Jesse found himself tongue-tied at this sudden kindness, but a warm bed was too difficult to turn away. _Hanzo would be over the moon._ “Thank you, Clem.”

“I see you’ve gotten yourself familiar, but you’re welcome. It’s the least I could do.”

Jesse started towards the door, and caught himself before he could bid farewell. “Mind if I ask something?”

“Can’t say if you didn’t ask.”

“Where _did_ you get your blood, now that you’re out here alone?”

Clem gave him a mysterious smile. “A lady’s gotta have her secret stash, right? Let’s just say Lasnaud and some of my other acquaintances indulge in hobbies others would consider… eccentric, for the lack of a better word.”

Jesse was left scratching his head.

“Nothing you kids need to hear about. Now shoo, your friend’s still waiting. With that white hair of his our guests are gonna think we had our Christmas decorations up before November.”


	10. Seasons

"C'mon! Just a few more steps!"  
  
Jesse was perched on the hillside, where snow had begun dusting the rocks beneath their feet and made an awfully pretty picture of crossing gold and white stripes on the sunlit ground. Had Clem’s doorman not told them all about this year’s early winter, he would have never imagined coming across any signs of precipitation before reaching the forests.

The mere sight of it made Hanzo beam. He made an almost-squeal as he bent over to feel the snow, gushing at the white-capped peaks drawing from the steady incline they now scaled. Jesse had to chase down an excited Hanzo and a downright ecstatic Emi as they raced towards the hill, but only the wolf had the strength to follow up on her own pace.  
  
"I thought someone’s so very pumped minutes ago?" Jesse said as Hanzo trudged towards him from below. Making things harder was Towa, squirming in Hanzo's arms who, according to her master, is a pain to chase down in the open. Up ahead, Emi at least had the sense to wait at the very top of the hill, barking madly at whatever lay beyond.     
  
"The height," he said, steam rising from his mouth. "Is a little... hard to breathe."  
  
The eastern part of the wasteland was the lowest, Jesse remembered guiltily, and decided to trek back down.  
  
"What are you doing?"  
  
"Don't want you rolling down the hill on me." He trailed on Hanzo's back, glancing behind them to see the huts and houses, barely larger than the Rocket's fuzzy shape in the distance, fall away into the desert landscape.  
  
Hanzo snorted in disdain. "Don't be absurd. I only need a moment to... adjust."  
  
"Just watch your step, old man."

Emi twirled around restlessly as they climbed. Twice Hanzo's feet slipped on the thawing snow, and twice Jesse reached out before he saw Hanzo steadying himself just fine. Towa might've seen him, however, judging by the cheeky look she gave Jesse for the rest of the way. He poked his tongue at Towa when Hanzo wasn't looking.  
  
"Careful," Jesse said as they scrambled over the last stretch onto the ridge. "It's a pretty steep drop."

But Hanzo had stopped listening, his breathless gasps bleeding into the wind. From where they stood the world was a muted, crystalline field of white, the mountains beyond parched of color as the afternoon light gleamed in the snow. Even the pine trees had shed their lush green coat for a dark olive as they prepared for winter. An alleviating scene, if not for the wolves howling on top of their lungs. The breeze rushed towards them head on and nearly snatched Jesse hat. Hanzo, however, was enraptured.  
  
"I can't—" he gave up and shook his head.  
  
"What did I tell ya?" Jesse said proudly, but was met with Towa's sheets shoved full in his face.  
  
"Hold her for a second," Hanzo said, distracted, and walked towards the ledge once Towa was off his hands. "Anything happens to her and I will skin you."  
  
"...sure, I guess?"   
  
Jesse held Towa to his eyes. "Your dad doesn't want you anymore. He's gonna leave you for some ice on the floor." She retaliated with a lick to his nose. "Blergh! Hanzo said it stinks! You little—"  
  
Both of them perked their heads up at Hanzo's cry. Only Emi stood where they were, barking. Jesse hurried up to where his footprints ended. "Hanzo?"  
  
Hanzo’s laughter traveled up the hill before he could spot him rolling down, mowing down a trail of snow in his wake. He came to a halt at the bottom of the hill, barely an inch uncovered save for two boots jutting in the air.  
  
"Your master can be an idiot sometimes, huh."  
  
Towa barked in agreement.  
  
They descended on Emi's back. Hanzo wasn't done enjoying himself either, giggling as he tried to shake the frost off his hair.  
  
"Gods, that was fun.”  
  
"Glad to see you didn't have your back snapped in two by a rock while rolling off a hill." Jesse helped him to his feet.  
  
"Is that meant to sound like me?"  
  
"You're hearing things." Jesse swatted off more snow stuck to his jacket, narrowly missing Hanzo's hips, but he seemed to pay no mind. "At least you're rolling in the right direction. He told us to walk in the shade for cover, but stay close to the clearing."  
  
"And it is going to snow all the way?"  
  
"All the way. It's gonna get harsher near the mountains, but the weather's looking pretty clear."  
  
"I still cannot believe I am standing on snow." Hanzo scooped some in his palm and brought it to Towa's nose. "It isn't poisonous, right?"  
  
Jesse shook his head.  
  
"The stories do it no justice. All we read about snow was cold and white. I always thought it was more of a sandy white, or cream white, and the writers are just bad at their craft. But it is... _white_ . I have never seen anything like it."  
  
"I do," Jesse said. "It's right on your head."  
  
Hanzo laughed. A silken, tinkling sound. "It is the always the closest thing that escapes our eye, is it not?"  
  
_Someone who comes into your life and makes the sky light up with just their eyes._  
  
_Oh Hanzo, what have you done?_  
  
Jesse turned away right as he felt his cheeks burn up. "We, uh, should get moving." When he looked back Hanzo was gazing skywards, cusping his hands to catch the falling snowflakes.

“I wish this would never end,” Hanzo whispered.

*

  
“Why wouldn’t this just end already?” Hanzo shouted.  
  
Jesse could barely open his mouth against the howling wind. He had both hands holding on to his hat, and Hanzo's hair had long since sprung free from his bun and slapping Jesse in the face. The gale seemed hell-bent on toppling them over. Not a moment had passed without Jesse fearing for his life. He was never caught in a blizzard of this size during his last trip, and the weather was keen to remedy that for both him and Hanzo.  
  
"You're the one who jinxed it!" He was forced to cling on Hanzo’s hip with his thighs, and seethed at the fact that he couldn't even properly relinquish that.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Nothing!"  
  
_"What?"_  
  
Even Emi's stride was unsteady as she planted her feet in snow as deep as Jesse's waist. He squinted his eyes against the brim of his hat, and couldn't even find the edge of the pine woods that was unmissably dense just a few miles back. He tried to look for even an outline of a mountain—  
  
—and spotted a firelight dancing in a wind.  
  
He pointed ahead and made an effort to shout into Hanzo's ear. "There!"  
  
Emi braced a quicker pace. The air whipped at his neck and turning it all numb. He could imagine Hanzo's delicate skin in cracks if they don't hurry.  
  
The light beckoned them forward, whirling around as the wind blew. A looming shadow descended upon them, then burst through the flurry of snow in the shape of a single mountain. The blizzard died to a considerably tamer gust as Emi found her way behind its rocky walls. Jesse was hoping for a mere shelter from the worst of the snowstorm, and felt a pang of panic when a large wooden door emerged.

“Hanzo? You with me?”

“Yes.” His teeth were clattering. “A little cold… is all.”

Jesse rubbed his hands until he felt it bite his skin, and pressed them below Hanzo’s cheeks. “Cry the devil, you’re frozen.”

Emi crashed into the door. It sent them lurching and Towa into a whining fit and not much else. She barked furiously, retreating into the corner.

He felt Hanzo curl into a shivering mess. “C’mon, c’mon!”

The door swung open.

*

“You look good in that.”

“Shut up.”

“Makes it easier to see how Towa takes after you.”

“For the love of everything good in the world, shut up.”

Jesse couldn’t help it. Hanzo wrapped in a blanket might be the only Hanzo he could make fun of without fearing for his life. The hearthfire flickered on his face. Once Jack had brought out the steaming water and blankets and hot broth Hanzo had fallen enviably cozy in his snug little nest, but there's no denying the comfort some warm food brought to Jesse's belly. Towa cuddled next to the wooden pail where Hanzo's feet were soaked in, sound asleep.  
  
"Is it a vampire thing? Not feeling the cold?" Hanzo said.  
  
"We do, actually, but it stops at _feeling_ . We don’t shiver and we don’t sweat. I certainly never had hypothermia. It's in the blood, I think."  
  
Hanzo sipped from the bowl. "How convenient."  
  
"We’re always recruiting, y’know."  
  
Hanzo shot him a glare and went back to his broth.  
  
Jesse looked around. The tavern would be exceedingly packed if it wasn't so exceedingly huge. The size of the room could rival a mess hall. The bar sat opposite the fireplace with a incredibly scruffy young man tending to the mugs, and the rest of the place was filled with tables of all sizes and a podium with a piano. Men and women chatted around the tables with a drink or two in hand, ordering around two kids wearing aprons. A group of older folks were seated around the round table in the center, watching a holovid playback of a hoverbike race with mild disinterest. Outside the door, three children chased around a confused Emi as their mother watched anxiously.

"We should get something to drink," Jesse said, eyeing the mead that had been floating around the bar.  
  
"As tempting as that idea sounds, I don’t think we can afford something frivolous."  
  
"C'mon, we had to stay sober all this while. It ain’t everyday we get a place to stop and relax a little."  
  
"You don't think you should save some money for later?"  
  
Jesse jingled his pocket and sighed. "Yeah, I should, actually."  
  
A hand tapped his shoulder.  
  
"You boys doing okay?"  
  
Jack the owner grabbed a chair and joined them in front of the fire. He had donned a vest over his unbuttoned white blouse after making sure Hanzo was attended to, his cropped hair peppery from age and his face strewn with scars. "Didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but all you have to do is ask. I’d love to share our mead with fellow outlanders any day."  
  
"No, sir, I insist," Hanzo said. "You are kind enough to take us in. We won't ask for anything redundant."  
  
"We don't do honorifics in The World's End. Just call me Jack." He slipped off his gloves and reached his hands into the hearth. "And you wouldn't call our house mead redundant if you had a taste. But it would be rude of me to push."  
  
Jesse almost wished he would take Hanzo on the courtesy contest. Instead they started on about the weather and how the blizzard's going away soon and other old men topics. Jesse noted the relatively spotless piano laying abandoned in the corner. An idea struck.  
  
"You play the piano, Jack?"  
  
"Wish I could," he chuckled. "Cornelius, our other bartender, plays wonderfully though. She's here most nights to perform, but she called in sick three days ago. Slipped on her porch."  
  
"You're looking for guests performers?"  
  
Jack latched on and grinned. "And you're suggesting a name?"  
  
"He's passable." Jesse shrugged. "A couple minutes of entertainment for the guests in exchange for drinks for two. I say a fair bargain."  
  
"The guests will be the judge of that. And trust me, they're a picky bunch." Jack leaned back in his chair.  "I had Cornelius coach me for a week or two and tried my hand. Let's just say I did their wives and husbands a favor for making them stay home for the next few days."  
  
Jesse finished his broth hastily and stood up. Hanzo stared at him in sheer embarrassment. "What are you doing."  
  
"Buying us drinks the slick way." Jesse cracked his fingers then his neck. "Wish me luck."  
  
Jesse walked across the hall, acknowledging each curious nod with a tip of his head. The piano was in good shape and properly dusted. He settled himself on the bench and tested some keys. The bar had fallen quiet save for the crackling fire and the wind outside.    
  
Jesse let his fingers fly.  
  
_Every pianist needs a song they can whip out and wow the crowd,_ Mariah told him when he was just getting started. _Something you have to drill over so hard you can play with your eyes closed and your hands backwards_ . She immediately regretted when he mentioned his choice, trying to persuade him out of becoming the very cliché of the roadhouse cowboy himself. Exasperated she may had been, Jesse could never forget the smile on her face when she let him perform in the Panorama Diner for the first time. It made him the smugest kid in the world back then, just as it did now.  
  
_Mind telling tonight's audience how ridiculous Maple Leaf Rag is, Mariah?_  
  
Even with his eyes intently following the dancing keys he could tell he had the crowd under his spell. The ragtime jumps sounded authentically funky off the old piano, and Jesse's speedy tune never wavered. He struck the last chord, and accepted the whirlwind of claps and whistles with open arms.  
  
"Requests are open!" he announced with confidence he channeled from devil-knows-where.

By the end of two wobbly Sinatra songs he was burned out, but indulged a shy old lady in a Que Sera Sera duet before excusing himself. He returned to Jack grinning widely, and Hanzo's jaw still on the ground.  
  
"Now this place feels like a proper honky-tonk," Jesse said.  
  
"Cornelius is going to be so mad at you." Jack gestured two fingers to the bartender.  
  
Hanzo forgot to even set down his empty bowl. It was a marvelous feeling to have him speechless instead of the other way around. "You never said you could play music, much less... that."  
  
"Not all cowboys play bad guitar country songs on the porch with a straw in his mouth." Jesse winked at him. "I'll go get the drinks."  
  
The bartender already had napkins and two mugs filled with enticing amber liquid ready. "That was some damn good playing, pal."  
  
"Appreciate it." Jesse was about to compliment the bearded lad on his fedora before noticing his fuzzy, pointy ears. The stare was obviously something he had dealt with routinely. He smiled and took off the hat, revealing two stubbly horns buried in his curly hair.

"There. Answered your question?"  
  
Jesse pointed to his lower body hidden behind the counter. "And your...?"  
  
"Yes, but that's off limits, sorry. You wouldn't want people to come up and ask you to show them your teeth, right?"  
  
"Oh absolutely, sure." Jesse hailed him with a saluting nod. "Nice hat, by the way."

Jesse settled back in his seat, noticing Hanzo flushing red in his cheeks even though he had the blankets tight around his neck. “You okay, Hanzo?”  
  
When he gave no response, Jack said, "I was telling him how—"  
  
“How you played the music well.” Hanzo was looking into the fire. "Jack said that.  I told him it was merely tolerable."  
  
Jesse looked at him, puzzled. "Thanks?"  
  
"Kids," Jack muttered to himself. "I see you had a word with my bartender?"  
  
"Yeah, uh, just never really seen a satyr in person before." He placed Hanzo's mug in front of him and took a sip from his. The sweet, spicy mulled mead ran down his throat like a warm stream of honey. "Didn't expect a human to have Hollow-fed employees, though."  
  
"If I had anything against Hollow-feds I'd have you two kicked out through the back door instead of having you go all Scott Joplin on my piano, don't you think?" Jack lifted his shoes onto the table. "We're used to it by now. Everyone's welcome unless you start trouble. Plus you don't really notice them all that much if you didn't squint."  
  
Jesse turned his head. There are at least five people who could pass as vampires without checking their teeth. A pair of women lurked in the corner, snoring, their werewolf jaws exposed to the world. The girl who was playing with Emi barged in as she cried for her daddy, and Jesse saw the tiny little horns tucked in her hair. Small wonder nobody batted an eye at two guys riding a ghost wolf.

“From what travelers told me the hate never really went away,” Jack said, staring at the ceiling. “People only fear and hate because most of them had never seen a real demon. I’ve seen my share of them for a lifetime, and it would be unfair to compare those brainless murderous nightmares with ordinary folk being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

 _Seeing real demons and walking away alive?_ Jesse was just about to ask before Jack cut him off.

“And where would you two be heading?”

Hanzo tossed him a look. “Lake of Shards,” Jesse said.

Jack nodded approvingly. “Very nice place. We had couples flocking there in spring since it’s way too cold this time of year, but you two will probably have the place all to yourselves,” he said, leaning down to scratch Towa’s head. “And you’re gonna be a busybody, aren’t you?”

Jesse turned towards the crowd to make sure Hanzo wouldn’t see his face burning up.

 

*

 

Jack insisted upon seeing them out, despite their best reassurances.

“You’ll see the town and the carnival I told you about right ahead. Just go straight down until you’re through the end of the tunnel. Can’t miss it.”

“Wait,” Jesse said, yanking Hanzo onto Emi’s back. “You’re sayin’ this isn’t a cave?”

“It was, until the previous owner bombed off the walls so the townspeople don’t have to hike two hours just to get a drink.”

“Pretty sure that’s illegal.”

“Well,” Jack smirked. “Nothing a hot mug of mulled mead couldn’t settle.”

The blizzard had lasted through the afternoon. Jesse guiltlessly stayed for a dinner of roasted lamb and gravy after an encore round requested by the crowd. The guilt came when the Doris Day lady, who was revealed to be the bartender’s mother-in-law, pushed a brown jacket in Jesse’s arms, worrying that he might catch a cold.

Hanzo wrapped Towa in his arms, holding her from running towards the baby satyrs huddling at the door. “Thank you for everything, Jack.”

“No worries. You two have fun.”

“Remember to tell Miss Doris Day I’ll bring her jacket on our way back,” Jesse said.

“She’d be happier if you would bring more songs instead.”

He waved them off. Emi marched on with a slow trot, the buzzing chatter from The World’s End fading away until the establishment was nothing but a tiny glowing speck in the darkness, and all he could hear was the crackle of torches and the wolf’s footsteps echoing in the canal. They were halfway down the firelit tunnel before Jesse remembered the question that slipped from him earlier.

“Hey, did your teachers told you the names of the two commanders of Knight’s Watch?”

“The ones that died closing the Breach?”

“Presumed dead, but yeah. Them.”

“Sir Reyes and Sir Morrison, if I remember correctly.”

“Right. Morrison.” Jesse chewed the inside of his cheek. “You don’t think… Jack looks too much like him, just older?”

Hanzo turned around with a weird look. “The Knight Commander’s name was John.”

“I know, but still. He said he’d seen demons before. Even I haven’t seen a real demon all my life.”

“Yes, your adventurous, exciting life.”

Jesse ignored him. “Light skin, short hair. And those Scars...”

“Jesse, you are thinking too much with information that are very little. It has been two hundred years. Does Jack give you immortal vibes?”

“No,” Jesse admitted.

“Me neither.”

Hanzo left it at that. _Maybe I_ was _overthinking._

Slowly an opening appeared ahead of them, the little pinhole of night sky growing bigger as the torches got swallowed by the moonlight. The back door was smaller than the front, and Emi had to crawl through.

The little town at the foot of the mountain came alive after the storm, tiny lights glowing to life right before his eyes. The night was young, the land heaving its breath under the watchful eye of the full moon hanging over them, as large as his palms.

Emi stopped in her tracks. The force sent Jesse’s face crashing into Hanzo’s bony neck. “Ow, the hell, boss—”

A man was standing in front of them.


	11. Friend of The Devil

The first thing about the stranger that stood out to Jesse wasn’t his perfect slick-back hair and trimmed beard, or the ridiculous red bowtie on his white suit with a red pocket square, or simply the fact that a formally-dressed man was now standing before them in the snow and crossing his hands expectantly behind his back.

It was the dots on his forehead.  
  
There were nine of them arranged in a square, seven gleaming crimson while the last two were a dead, ashen black, darker than the nighttime gloom cast around his angular profile. The man smiled politely and clapped his hands together.  
  
" _Bonsoir, messieurs_. Most fancy meeting you here."  
  
Hanzo straightened his back. "Can we help you, mister...?"  
  
"Maximilien." He studied his nails. "I came on behalf of Talon."  
  
Jesse reached for his revolver.  
  
"Now now, we could save such unpleasantries for later," he said breezily. "I'm here to offer a proposal, first and foremost. But would you mind coming down before we speak? My neck is getting incredibly sore."  
  
Hanzo stared into his eyes. "I'm afraid that would not be possible."  
  
Maximilien sighed. Five soldiers, armed just like the ones in the desert caravan, streamed out from behind the rocks. "And I'm afraid that wasn't meant to be a request."  
  
Emi growled. Hanzo gave her a stiff pat on her back.

"How fast is your gun?" he whispered.  
  
Jesse felt his stomach weigh down as he realized what Hanzo was asking. "Faster than yours."  
  
They leaped down, Towa still cradled in Hanzo's arms, whining softly as she buried herself in the blanket. Jesse's hand itched for his gun.  
  
"Now we are talking business," Maximilien said with an armed squad behind him.  
  
"Speak."  
  
"Monsieur Shimada, I know you had an unfortunate run-in with Magister O'Deorain recently." The man crossed his fingers. "We apologize for her rather extreme methods, but we are under the impression that you had rejected her professionalism which led to this tricky scenario with your pet?"  
  
"And you are suggesting I let her perform whatever she did to my wolf, on me?" Hanzo's temper bubbled.  
  
"Sounds like something outlandish, I know, but there would have been less... complications."  
  
"Like what? Like me walking away alive and causing you trouble?"  
  
"Oh, Monsieur Shimada, it was never our intention to bring any bodily harm in our exchange."  
  
Jesse had to hold him back. "You killed the tribe elder."  
  
"A casualty in the crossfire. One we deeply regret." There was not a shred of regret in those steely eyes. "But it is our hope that this mishap would not affect our original project."  
  
Hanzo sneered. "Project. What a nice word for my people's abduction."  
  
"Relocation," he corrected. "The Okamis are under our vigilant protection."  
  
"Where are they, you bastard?"  
  
"That would be for you to decide. We're offering your tribesman safe transport to Harunotani, in exchange for your cooperation in our research."  
  
"What happens if I don't?"  
  
_“Quelle malchance.”_ Maximilien gave him a _do-what-you-want_ shrug. "I was hoping we wouldn't have to find out."  
  
"And you have the gall to call this an exchange," Jesse said.  
  
"What about you, Monsieur McCree?" His voice was drenched in a thinly-masked contempt. "How does it feel to be in the bounty list for once?"  
  
Jesse swallowed his tongue.  
  
Maximilien continued like he had just addressed an annoying child. "This need not end in bloodshed. All we ask for is your assistance, and all unrelated personnel are free to walk away from this mess. Monsieur McCree goes back to his gang after his little vacation, your people return to—"  
  
"And who might those related personnel be?" Hanzo asked.  
  
He looked troubled by the question. "Why, we have you, a prime specimen, along with your pet of course. If it yields fruit we will be requesting the help of your brother and father as well."  
  
Hanzo chuckled coldly. “Of course you do.”  
  
"Monsieur Shimada—"  
  
"I would have to be born yesterday to think I will walk into your grounds and leave unharmed with a handful of gifts. Do I appear so foolish as to not see through your word play? 'Bodily harm', 'vigilant protection'... Pathetic, how you need to convince yourselves of your innocence with these flimsy technicalities."  
  
Maximilien's jaw grew taut. He then drew a shuddering breath, and his smile was scarily casual. "You have mistaken, Monsieur Shimada, if you think we still hold our innocence in any regard at all." He rubbed his palms and exhaled. "I had the feeling you would be hard to deal with diplomatically. I'm afraid we will have to resort to unpleasantries, then."  
  
"We?" Hanzo said curiously, hugging Towa's sheets. "I've taken up the babysitting role long ago. You'll have to deal with someone else."  
  
"You mean Monsieur McCree?" He wasn't even trying to hide his jeer. "I can't begin to picture what a baby vampire—"  
  
The baby vampire drew his six-shooter and had the shots lined up before Maximilien could finish his sentence. Jesse squeezed the trigger, fighting the recoil and watched the bullet zip towards his head, then fired another, and another—  
  
And he stopped.  
  
Maximilien tilted his head at him, looking bored. The soldiers behind him shouted and raised their rifle. "As I was saying."  
  
With a whip of her paw Emi sent a cloud of snow exploding around them, the flurry blinding even Emi's own glow. Jesse felt a hand grab his wrist and was yanked to the side, running until he slammed into the side of the mountain.

“Han—”

Hanzo pressed his hand on his mouth, their faces inches apart as Hanzo slowly shook his head. They waited for the snow to settle. Maximilien and his glow-in-the-dark polka dot forehead emerged first, irritably flicking the frost off his hair. His razor eyes swept across the field, resting on where they stood and making Jesse’s heart leap, and simply glided on like they weren’t there. “Spread out!” he ordered. “Shimada stays alive. I don’t care what—”

Emi’s open jaws exploded out of the dark and chomped down. Maximilien leaped away, retreated as the soldiers fired blindly into the wolf.

Hanzo pulled him up. _Go._

 _Emi_ , Jesse mouthed back.

“She will be fine. He can’t hurt her even if he’s a sorcerer.” Hanzo glanced behind him, towards the blinking lights. “I’ll explain. We have to go.”

Off they went dashing across the plains, the chilly air rushing past them and almost blew his hat off. Twice Jesse turned around to find the soldiers fruitlessly trying to pin Emi down. The second time he saw a man getting caught in her teeth and was sent hurtling down the hill.

“What do you mean he can’t hurt her?”

“It’s another of Tsukuyomi’s blessing.” Hanzo slowed his pace for Jesse to catch up, his quiver rattling noisily. “Magic attacks are inflicted back on the magician. Protects them from curses and direct spells.”

“ _What?_ Emi has goddamn magic immunity all this time and you never said anything?”

“You never asked!” Hanzo almost shouted.

“Then why are we even worried?”

“Because,” Hanzo said, panting. “Your bullets are not doing anything to our friend, and I suppose my arrows won’t be too far off.”

They were encroaching upon the outer rims of the town. Jesse could see people strolling by, cleaning up after the blizzard and preparing for the night. _Did the gunshots reach them?_

“We can’t bring this fight into town.”

Hanzo nodded. “You are suggesting?”

Jesse scanned the perimeter. The town was clamped right in the intersection of three valleys, the only mountain crossing far on the unreachable left. On the halfway point sat a decommissioned ferris wheel, surrounded by more carnival rides rusting away behind a low metal fence.

Hanzo saw it and regarded him skeptically. “Are there any cover to speak off?”

“We’re just gonna lay low until we figure out how to lose the tail. It’s better than nothing.”

They sprinted towards the carnival. Hanzo shushed Towa harshly when she barked. Jesse risked a peek behind them, and found Maximilien hot on their trail.

Hanzo cursed. “Footprints. The veil can’t reach that far.”

“Just go!”

They jumped over the fence. The carnival grounds was deader than a cemetary: bumper cars stuffed with snow, a gnome statue with half its face chipped off, the ferris wheel with missing rims that left the carriages dangling like autumn leaves. Ten-year-old Jesse would’ve had a panic attack just by standing amidst the rides’ shadows.

The only facility with cover was the boarded-up ticketing booth, and waiting inside would make them sitting ducks. Jesse spotted a massive rectangular cabin out back next to a collapsed pirate ship, and grabbed Hanzo’s hand as they made a run. Maximilien had chased them to the fence, and far behind them were the four remaining soldiers, fleeing from Emi in full sprint.

Jesse found the entrance on the other side. A ringmaster-like figure welcomed them with a metal box in his hand and a speech bubble saying: “Two quarters per entry; kids enter free!” The sign above, barely eligible beneath the shadow of its own roof, only read: “Hall Of”.

“Hall of what?”

Jesse shoved him in. “Who gives a shit!”

The interior was pitch black. Jesse kept his mouth open to ease his breathing, and gasped all over again when Hanzo bumped into a solid surface with a dull whack.

“Shh,” Hanzo whispered as he fished out a whimpering Towa from her sheets. Her coat shed some light on their surroundings, and the figure standing in the way came forth.

“Jesse, you are a genius.”

He saw Hanzo’s back. Then his face, and his profile and another profile squished to the size of a fat midget. The wall of mirrors stretched on like a labyrinth, each panel showing a murky silhouette with a glowing blue ball of fire in the middle. Hanzo reached out a free hand until he found the surface, and delved deeper within the hall. He looked at Jesse excitedly.

“Can’t you see? Maximilien and I have a level playing field in here. With your smell and hearing we can just trap him inside and leave.”

“Oh shit,” Jesse said. “That might actually work. Just need to find somewhere with sharp angles so—”

Hanzo’s enthusiasm died as he stepped into the hall. Something was wrong with the light.

“Where are your reflections?”

Jesse glanced in the mirror and could only see Hanzo’s puzzled face. “I don’t know! This never happened! We only have—”

_Oh for fuck’s sake._

“Silver. Old mirrors. Of _course._ ” Jesse felt like slamming his head into the glass.

Exasperated, Hanzo caught his arm and led him inside. The scene reflected back from the mirrors was something out of a haunted house movie. “It’s too dangerous to hide and use the veil,” Hanzo said gravelly. “If he gets us cornered there would be— ow— no escape. We must proceed with the plan.”

“How? I’m gonna stick out like a spotlight. Unless we can make a diversion—”

“There’s no time for this kind of maneuvering. If we could just...”

Next to them was a stretchy mirror with its bottom half shattered, leading into a dark opening in the space behind the mirrors.

Jesse shook his head. “It’s too obvious. He’s gonna find us before we could find our way out.”

“That is why I’m staying behind.”

“What?” Jesse cried. “You nuts?”

Hanzo shoved Towa into Jesse’s hands and retrieved his bow. “Make sure she’s safe or I will skin you. Once you’re out—”

“Whoa whoa whoa, hold it, you can’t stay here alone.”

“You have to get Towa out of here,” he hissed. “Once he sees me, run and get Emi. She might be the only one with the means to kill him.”

“I ain’t gonna leave you with—”

“Do I really have to make myself clear?” Hanzo tugged his collar. “You are a burden, and now you better follow my orders. All I am asking from you is to get my wolf to safety so make yourself useful and get out of my way.”

Hanzo’s eyes flickered and his lips quivered. Jesse stared him down. He couldn’t get any words out of his throat. Then they heard breathing and a light shuffling noise.

“Just go, Jesse. Please.” His voice turned limp.

Jesse bit his lip and couldn’t bring himself to object. He ducked into the shaft. Borrowing Towa’s light he tiptoed through the space that was much less disorienting with their opaque walls. He looked back before the first turn, but Hanzo’s figure was already swallowed by the gloom.

Footsteps. Red light sheared through tiny cracks in the glass that Jesse hadn’t noticed before, and he quickly covered up Towa’s glowing body and held his breath. Peeking through one of those cracks he saw the dozens of Maximilien’s wary reflections as he trod down the hall, the dots on his head painfully bright. He marched past Jesse without a further glance.

  
Jesse walked on, bonking into a wall twice and reached a dead end that made him took a detour. The air was heavy with moisture and dust to navigate through. There seemed to be air channels everywhere, befuddling his search.

Somewhere in the depths of the hall Maximilien rose his voice: “...entrust your prized possession to a vampire?”

_It’s a trap. Just walk on._

He turned around.  
  
Tracing their voices was much easier. There were seams all over the place, and Jesse followed the exchange until they were all in the same corridor.

“...cannot even bring himself to kill. He told you about that?”

“He did. It was a strength you could never dream of.”

“Listen to yourself. Why are you defending a Hollow-fed?”

“Because he had shown me many things,” Hanzo said. “Things that my elders told me were too much to expect from mortals, much less a half-demon. And it was a Hollow-fed that made me realize how little I actually know. Now, those?” Jesse saw a shadow move. “I am going to teach you until you are a bloody pulp on the ground.”

“ _C’est beau!_ Let us see how you measure up to your ambitions, then.”

The gleaming red ball of fire charged across the hallway. Jesse followed, brawling sounds bursting through the mirrors. There was a ringing smack that Ichiro had a taste of, accompanied by Maximilien’s surprised cry. Another whooshing sound that ended in a glass cracking. Jesse found a larger missing shard and peered through, seeing the two lithe figures circling each other in a furious dance, the light hopping through the dozens of mirrors dizzyingly.

Jesse fumbled for his revolver and checked its remaining three bullets, then his hands stopped. _One missed shot and I’m gonna blow my cover._ He had to go physical, but his knife ain’t gonna do shit. No melee weapon can make up for someone never being in a fight all his life.

But there was something else he knew.

He knew what he must do, and it scared him. An ancient, burrowing fear.

He heard a soft clatter that sounded like Hanzo dropping his bow. Punches landed and forced a grunt out of him. The ball of light kept advancing, the blows growing rapid and ruthless.

Jesse set a trembling Towa on the ground and put a finger on his lips. A makeshift runway stretched before him. His breath turned shallow as he felt the dread close in on his throat.

Maximilien let out a heaving shout, and a shadow flew across the corridor, crashing into a mirror somewhere. Jesse bit down his cry. The light walked towards the end of the hallway where the figure lay crumpled.

He burst into a sprint. He closed his eyes and opened them at the last minute, shielding his face with both arms, and exploded through the glass with a torrent of pain.

Maximilien couldn’t even turn his head before Jesse’s hands found his shoulder and took hold, sinking his teeth in the tender part right above his unbuttoned collar. They smashed to the ground. He made a low moaning sound as Jesse clenched his jaw on the pulsating artery, fighting the urge to gulp down the bitter fluid pooling in his mouth even though he knew it would be halfway down his esophagus by now. Maximilien trashed wildly, wringing his arms until Jesse felt a sharp burn on his forearm. He only bit down all the more harder.  
  
Jesse almost blacked out when the blood kicked in. A deafening static filled his ears and swelled until they gave a pop that he could feel in his skull. His vision flickered, agonizingly; he forced his eyelids open only to have his sight narrowed into a light tunnel where he could see every speck of dust on the ground stretching a million miles away. He wanted to knock his head against something to make the throbbing go away. The steady dripping sound of blood alone wound his gears, and he wanted so badly to scratch that itch on the back of his head.

Blood. He felt like dying with all this blood rushing through him, and he felt like dying without.

Jesse made a guttural growl when he heard a loud crash from the outside as the entire building quaked. The bloodied shard of glass in Maximilien’s hand fell to the ground with a clatter. HIs jaw was slack, the élan vital in his eyes vacant and fleeing. Jesse witnessed one of the lights on his forehead fade into blackness, the black spots connecting in a row of three, and the confusion shoved some sense back into his mind where there was nothing but unadulterated hunger and rage.

The next thing he knew he had flopped onto the ground. He looked down, horrified, to see Maximilien’s entire arm, flesh and bones and clothes and all, had flattened beneath his body and disappeared. Then his shoulder caved in, and his face dissolved, and his entire being crumbled to dust in his hands. Jesse scrambled away.

“Jesse...?”

Hanzo was sitting up with his face stricken and a cut on his chin.

Tremors travelled beneath the ground. Jesse could feel the two men running towards their direction, could smell the fright in their scent.

“Han...” Jesse coughed up. “Stay there.”

Without pausing to think he lunged, tacking one of the soldiers as they turned the corner and flung him into a mirror that stayed miraculously intact. In his panic the other soldier fired his rifle, screaming as his bullets plunged into the back of his comrade that Jesse had held up as a shield. He lashed out and snatched him by the nape, slamming him onto the floor with a force that sent blood gushing from his lips. Jesse dropped on his knees to sniff the two bodies.

“Jesse, stop. Stop!”

Jesse hissed when a pair of hand grabbed his shoulders. Hanzo stared into his eyes unflinchingly, his stern look slapping him back to his senses.

“Yes. Stop.” Jesse muttered, tearing his eyes away from the puddle of blood on the ground. “I have to stop. I have… to stop.”

His head was pounding. Towa waddled into view and barked. The sound split his brain, and Jesse gnarled at her to make her stop, his hands lashing out in a choking motion before he caught himself. Hanzo’s arm was guarding in front of Towa。

Jesse clutched his hair, dimly aware of his missing hat. “Make it stop… please. Make it stop. Make—”

“This won’t hurt,” Hanzo said, and spun him around without waiting for an answer.

A firm stab struck the back of his neck, and he felt nothing more.  


*

 

Jesse woke in cold sweat, consciousness arriving like a baseball bat to the head.

His eyes were watery when he blinked them open. A fire burned at the edge of his sight, its sparks sailing into the night sky obscured by the canopy of pine trees. He tried to sit up, only to lose his balance once he realized his wrists and feet were tied, and fell from the log and flat on his face on the wet, leafy forest grounds.

“Fuck.”

“Look who’s awake.” Hanzo propped Jesse up like a sack of hay and immediately peeled his eyelids open while he was powerless to resist.

“Hey, hey, what are you—”

Hanzo’s face was all Jesse could see as he studied each eye. “Sorry. They told me to check if the whites are clear before I untie you.” He leaned back and gave a sigh of relief. “I have never seen someone’s eye outside of the irises covered entirely in black. It was a terrifying sight.”

“Accidental pun. Good job. Now can I get out of these already?”

The knot came off with a tug of the loose rope. Jesse rubbed his face blearily has Hanzo freed his legs, which he stretched out immediately after. He winced at the ache on his left forearm, now cast in a brown bandage that he recognized as his sweater. He was wearing the Doris Day lady’s jacket zipped all the way to the top.

“You took my clothes off?”

“Just the first layer. Don’t be such a baby about it.” Hanzo fetched him a metal canteen that made a loud pop when he unscrewed the cap. “The townspeople said warm water helps.”

Jesse gulped it down greedily, feeling his stomach came back to life, reeling as the metallic aftertaste of blood was washed down with it. He gurgled a mouthful and spat it back out. The town laid just beneath the slope, mostly dark with a handful of lights beaming through houses, the silhouette of the ferris wheel erected further down the plains feeding the gaps in his memory.

“Where’s Emi?” Jesse remembered. He followed Hanzo’s finger to see her curled up deeper in the woods, her blue eyes staring blankly into the distance. He spotted Towa sleeping on her back beside the fire. Hanzo sat down next to him with a food container propped open, holding a generous serving of potatoes and meat.

“I grabbed some of your money for dinner,” he said.

Jesse took a bite. It was roasted venison. “No worries.”

They sat and ate, watching the contortion of their shadows against the campfire.

“How are you feeling?” Hanzo asked him.

“Hungry and hungover and stupid.”

Hanzo chuckled. “Perfectly normal, then.”

Jesse rubbed his hands together, breathing into them like he was cold and not trying to cover his shaky voice. “I scared you, didn’t I.”

“I would rather be scared than have my neck torn to shreds.”

“Stop,” Jesse said, harder than he intended. “It’s not funny.”

Hanzo fell silent and nibbled on his potato. Jesse waited for the simmer in his head to pass and sucked a deep breath.

“I thought I never had to let that side of me see the light of day again.”

Hanzo said nothing.

“I hate it. I hate it so fucking much,” Jesse said, his murmur choking up. “I don’t want this. I never had a say. Who the fuck decided on this shit? I’m gonna—”

Emi strutted behind them, as silent as a cat. She sprawled down around the fire and rested her head on the ground behind them. He met eyes with the wolf, and her velvety tongue gave him a lick that felt nothing more than rubbing a pillow on his side. Jesse gave in and petted her snout.

“I cannot tell you what you should and shouldn’t feel.” Hanzo was looking up at the stars, and they were plentiful. “But I will be pissed if you blame yourself. You saved me and Towa and earned nothing but pain in return. That, I can never repay you.”

 _I don’t want you to_ , Jesse almost said. But that was a lie, wasn’t it?

Towa ran towards them soon after. She stopped by Hanzo’s side, measuring Jesse with a cagey look.

“I’m so sorry, baby girl.” Jesse spread his arms open. “Please don’t be angry.”

Towa grunted disapprovingly.

“She isn’t,” Hanzo said under his breath. “She just wants you to feel guilty so she could get more snacks.”

Jesse readily obliged, tossing her a fatty slice of venison that she gobbled down. Towa came between them and gave Jesse the greatest surprise when she pounced onto his lap and tucked herself to sleep.

“Now you have to help with the babysitting.” Hanzo smiled adoringly at the pup.

“This isn’t your doing, is it?”

Hanzo blinked and looked away. “Why should I?”

“Because everybody wants a piece of this cowboy, it would seem.”

“Take a look in the mirror, will you? The ones thick enough to suffer the insufferable.” Then, without giving Jesse to chance to complain, he tossed him his stetson. “The Lake of Shards is right past across this forest. We leave by sunrise. Get some rest.”

Jesse tried to lean against the log but found Emi’s fuzzy paws behind him instead. He gingerly lowered his weight into it like a cushion, half-expecting her to shake him off and pull away.

She never did. Jesse knew that because he spent the whole night awake, watching, listening, thinking, waiting for Hanzo to slip hour by hour until his head was resting on Jesse’s shoulder.


	12. Overture (For Missing Halfs)

The tree, bare as bone and pale as death, burst into the stark afternoon light as Jesse parted the thicket of pine leaves.

“Will ya look at that.”

It was taller than he remembered. Cracks of age ran down the trunk like veins. Roots crawled over the edge of the snow-covered ground into the lake, where the tips joined the water that had frozen over. He leaned against one of the many stone columns littered around the water, pinnacles so tall and sharp not an inch was covered in snow.

“This is the one?” Hanzo asked while flicking snow off his shoulders. Towa followed suit, rocking his entire head to shake off the white frost on his muzzle.

“This is the one.”

Hanzo ran his fingers through one of the stone columns. “You are not wrong when you say The Frostlands has the most literal names.”

Jesse approached the lake. It had been summer when they passed all those years before, the tree as dead as it was now but adorned with chirping birds above and glimmering fishes below, Now there was nothing but the drab gray sky stretching for miles and miles. The sleet was denser out in the clearing, the wind brisk and prickly.

He waddled over the sinking blanket of snow and perched over the lake, watching himself gazing up from the glassy ice. The man looked exactly like he did before everything went down, with the exception of his brown sweater now barely a rag wrapped around his forearm. Hanzo, on the other hand, already had a peppery stubble around his jaw. He joined him by the lake, inspecting his reflection with a frown.

“I look like a homeless person,” he said.

“Why, I’ve got some news for you.”

He gave Jesse a shove. Behind them Emi pranced out of the woods, twirling in circles and barking at the sky.

Hanzo gazed into the lake. “No sign of fish though.”

“Water must’ve frozen pretty deep. There could be rabbits or foxes if you’re hungry.”

“I’m fine,” he said, rubbing Towa’s neck and gazing off into the distance. “The town is not far, then?”

Jesse turned to his left, away from the sun. “Once we cross these woods and a downhill walk, should be there. An hour tops.”

“Good. Let’s get this over with.”

They started off into the forest, a pair of elongated shadows disappearing into the gloom. The ground edged ever so slightly downwards. Trees lined their slippery path, whistling their gentle winter lullaby with the sound of crunching snow beneath their feet. For once Hanzo was in the lead, his hair gleaming as he weaved between shafts of sunlight, checking back on Emi at their tail every now and then.

Jesse watched his arrows bob hypnotically in his quiver with fletchings stained in red. They really came this far, he thought, the realization knocking him in the chest like a tangible thing. He could almost see the trail they carved out behind him, one dripping with blood that was and wasn’t their own.

He let his mind wander on where it would lead. He thought of Clementine, living their best life. Thriving. Maybe he could stumble into an opportunity like that, get rid of this name and face, start anew.

Hanzo passed him a glance, and a nod.

What if—

 _No,_ a voice inside him scolded. _You’re being stupid._

A branch slapped him on the arm while he drifted off and made him wince. Hanzo was already halfway reaching for his bow.

“It should have mended by now,” he said.

“Maybe it got infected or something. I’ll look for meds later.”

“We’re visiting a wizard healer, stupid.”

“Yeah,” Jesse laughed it off. “That’ll do.” When he had made sure Hanzo was occupied by the trek and Emi by the leaves in her way, he pried open the bandage and felt the air escape his lungs when he saw greenish veins crawling from the wound that was still oozing a metallic red.

 _The silver mirror._ He remembered the pain that flared beneath his skin, like something squirming into his blood and lodged itself there. It still stung. And the throbbing…

He pulled the fabric back into place. _Wizard healer._ If they could turn ghosts into wolves then back into ghosts, this would be an easy fix.

Their walk was uneventful. Emi didn’t come across any creatures to bark at, and Towa had been asleep most of the way. A thousand thoughts ran astray in Jesse’s head, so he’d rather not open his mouth at all. All they did was walk and walk and walk.

“Jesse?” Hanzo said when they were in the thick of the forest, so softly he almost mistook it for the rustling of leaves.

“Hmm?”

“This is almost over, right?”

Jesse tried to peer through the trees. “We’re, what, thirty minutes in? I can’t see—”

“No, I mean...” He hadn’t looked back. “ _This._ ”

Jesse blinked. Behind him, Emi made a confused whine.

“I don’t know,” he said, then laughed. “I sure hope so.”

“Really?”

That caught Jesse back. He paused for a long time. “I don’t know that either.”

Hanzo chuckled. It felt heavier than it sounded. “You never do.”

They walked some more. The trudging seemed endless under the silence, and the unchanging landscape was beginning to get on Jesse’s nerves when the trees finally grew sparse. Between them, the profile of an icy mountainside peered through. Hanzo reached the bottom of the hill and took off into the sun.

He quickened his steps and ventured into the open. The wind rushed full on his face, threatening to send his hat airborne. They had broken through the edge of the woods and onto a snowy embankment that ended in a cliff where Hanzo now stood.

“Jesse.”

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he said as Emi sprinted past him, barking.

“You are certain this is the right place?”

Jesse’s stomach sank. “Why, ‘course it is, what—“

The town slowly rose into view. He saw the little matchbox houses arranged in a neat circle down to the very edges, the spiral-topped sept for their northern gods erected slightly off the middle where the central square was, snow flooding the roads and running into the heart of the town.

A town that was completely deserted.

*

When Jesse leaped down from Emi’s back the snow rose to his thighs. He would’ve sunken deeper if not for the bottom layer that was dense enough to hold his boot. Hanzo landed much more gracefully, but winced all the same when it buried his calves. He wrapped Towa tighter in her sheets to muffle her yips.

Jesse couldn’t see any sign of disaster or demolition. The houses were as identical up close as they were from a distance, square little cabins painted gingerbread brown. The snow had piled up into yards and barricaded most of the doors. He passed a stable where the roof had shielded most of the falling snow and the fences still enduring, but there was no carcass or even hay on the ground. _If the stable’s here…_

Jesse crossed into an alleyway, and his insides turned cold when he saw the sign above the first shuttered door they ran into. _Apotheke_ , it read, the black paint just beginning to peel off. He wiped his sleeve across the frosted window and saw shelves full of bottled tonics and metal equipment along with the layer of dust settling over everything, ages old. Even the operating table where Balderich had examined his patients( was in its old spot, though the marble cast had long lost its sheen.

“This is the apothecary?”

Jesse couldn’t bring himself to answer.

His legs carried him to the town square. It was where they first met the old lady who brought them to Balderich, he recalled, sitting on a bench with a book and her pet bunny. Wherever that bench was, it had been hidden beneath all the snowfall and possibly frosted into icy chunks. The shrubs that had lined the perimeter were understandably gone. Two unrecognizable bronze statues stood amidst the blinding whiteness, dramatic postures lamenting the ghost town’s unsung fate.

The sept rank alone as the only structure with sufficient elevation, its bolted door exposed to the world. It was black, astonishingly so: a black spire crowning a black roof that rested on black octagonal walls, its exterior respectably plain save for three raven carvings perched above the entrance. Hanzo climbed the steps and leaned his shoulder against the door that wouldn’t budge. Jesse nearly jumped out of his skin at the loud flapping noise and looked up to find an evidently living raven standing atop the sept’s roof, cawing at them before fluttering away from where the remaining two stood. Emi eyed them suspiciously.

“They can’t be all gone.” Jesse cleared his throat. “Hello!”

Hanzo shushed him. “We’re not taking any unnecessary risks.”

“Right now? I say any risk we’re taking is necessary.”

Jesse crossed the plaza and past the sept, shouting, with no one but the wind calling back.

“Jesse, just hold on—”

“Hello!”

Emi’s thudding footsteps were right on his tail. He turned a corner—

—and gasped out loud at the massive castle in the distance with its blocks upon blocks of stone towers, gray streamers of smoke rising from its depths.

“Hanzo!” he shouted. “The—”

“The castle?” Emi pulled up beside him and bowed down. Hanzo regarded him from above with an exasperated grin. “Thank you for the timely intel. Now hop on.”

*

 

Jesse had to clasp his hat as Emi tore through the air. He held the brim against his eyes to study the castle looming over them and how it had hidden from plain sight. The gray behemoth of a fortress was hewn into the mountain they descended from and nearly as tall, but constructed in the confines of an L-shaped ridge that conveniently obscured nearly all of it until one stood right before the opening.

“You think Balderich is inside?”

“ _Someone_ is,” Jesse said. “If there’s any way we can get answers, it’s in there.”

“And if it is a hostile?”

“Then we’ll just answer in kind, won’t we?” The memory of Maximilien’s blood on his tongue flashed by and made him shudder, the horrible ecstasy a nightmare he never wanted to relive. “Though I’d rather leave that to the pro.”

Hanzo turned towards him and regarded him empathetically. “I mean what I said. I will keep you out of any other bloody affairs, if you wish. It is the least I can do.”

Jesse had no idea how to react to that. He gave him a smile as gracefully as he could muster under his flustering cheeks and looked away.

A large and ornate stone arch welcomed them, more ceremonial than of any utility seeing the clear absence of a gate. Emi passed beneath the archway, sniffing at the two poles for good measure.

Jesse felt something.

A change in the air that he couldn’t quite articulate, just _something_. A slight tingling, perhaps, but a far cry from the static before a lightning strike. A faint but lingering charge, but stagnant. He was invigorated and alarmed at the same time.

“You felt that?”

“Felt what?” Hanzo eyed him sideways.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just...weird. Could be magic.”

“If a sorcerer is living inside I wouldn’t expect anything less than a barrier or the like, maybe for those not Hollowed. But stay on your guard.”

The sun was way past its zenith, stretching their shadows across the snow-covered courtyard before they could. Hanzo had Emi lower them a little distance from the towering wooden doors, and grabbed an arrow.

“You want me to hold Towa?” Jesse extended his empty hands. Hanzo stared at him, then Towa in his arms, before hesitantly handing the blankets over.

“I will still skin you if anything happens to her.”

“Never doubted that.” Jesse pulled down his jacket’s zipper and stuffed her inside, just deep enough for her to poke her nose out in the open. He looked into Towa’s beady eyes, puckering his lips and rocking the bundle on his chest. “You okay there, girl?” She answered with an energetic bark.

“Right.” He found reassurance in Hanzo’s steely eyes. “Here we go.”

He let Hanzo take the lead. The doors lurked in their own shadow, the dying light of day painting the wood in swathes of gold. As his eyes adjusted to the dimness they revealed the writings on the doorframe, runes as ancient as they were foreign carved into stone in big blocky strokes. Hanzo laid his fingers on one of them. They remain lifeless at his touch, but Hanzo’s back went stiff as a plank.

“Definitely magic. Just traces, but clean ones. You should stay back.”

Jesse took no offense. He waited as Hanzo tried to pry it open, then pressed on the other runes without success. He stepped back and made a frustrated huff. “Is there some sort of combination? A switch?”

“Maybe we could try knocking?”

Hanzo shot him a withering look, but relented and slammed his fist into the door. It budged not in the slightest.

“Maybe our host is not as well-versed in courtesy as you are,” Hanzo said.

Jesse stepped away from the door and into the snow. He gazed up and continued back until he spotted the tiny balcony above them, the darkness too thick to peer inside.

“Hello! Good sir! Or madam!” 

Hanzo winced at the echoes. “You cannot go one day without announcing your presence at the most conspicuous situation possible, can you?”

“What can I say? I have a one-trick social prowess and I intend to use it to its fullest.” He threw his head back and continued shouting at the sky. “My friend and I are here to see Balderich! We’ve come a lo—”

Jesse was interrupted by the clanking of chains and gears that seemed to reverberate through the mountains. It ground to a halt, stopping long enough for Hanzo to load his bow, and thundered on.

And the door flaunted open with a resounding groan.


	13. Blessed Be The Hands of Mercy and The Steel of Justice

The darkness inside was so encompassing Jesse’s heart skipped when Hanzo disappeared within.

“Hanzo?” he whispered, suddenly afraid of what he had disturbed. “Wait up!”

But there were no monsters or demons when he set foot into the hall, no glowing eyes lurking in the shadows. Wind gushed in from behind and made a scary whistling noise. The place smelled of ancient rocks and moisture and fires long dead, but there was also the tinge of lavender detergent and, unmistakably, people.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, the immense depth of the hall unfurling slowly as the light poured in. The landing at the gates paved an unbroken stone path inside. He looked up and found nothing but pitch black greeting him back, what small expanse of the walls splashed with light disappearing into the murk above.

“You see anything?”

Hanzo shook his head. “Seems like an ordinary castle to me.”

Still he couldn’t see an end to the walls that closed around them. Jesse strayed from the middle of the path, and felt his boots connect with something flat and unmoving. He reached out with his hands and felt nothing but cold air.

He turned. Hanzo was on the other end, still gazing up as he walked. Jesse saw his body jolt and sway forward with a soft sharp gasp, and Hanzo was falling, falling—

—before Emi lashed out and grabbed Hanzo’s nape with her jaw.

Jesse swallowed the scream lodged in his throat. He hurried on to grab Hanzo’s shoulders as Emi lowered him onto the ground. He was deathly pale, and panting so hard it came out like a pained rasp.

“Hanzo. Hanzo?” Jesse gave him a light pat on the cheek. “You good?”

He blinked, then glared at Jesse in a way that only Jesse alone could find assuring. “Why don’t we dangle you over the edge and see?”

Emi was growling where Hanzo almost fell, her blue glow illuminating their surrounding much better than the hazy sunlight. Jesse edged towards the railing, a blocky stone wall that only reached his thigh, and peered over. Heights never made him sick until now. The drop was just as unfathomable as the ceiling, a straight pit plunging down towards whatever laid beneath. They were standing on a _bridge_ , he realized with a start, connecting the castle ground with its interior in a chamber that was evidently a one-way ticket to hell. He made a conscious effort to clench Towa closer to his chest.

“Whoever built this either have a terrible architect or meant for this to be a line of defense for the fortress itself.”

“A terribly effective one,” Hanzo added, arms crossed several feet away from the edge.

The metallic clamoring came again, ear-splittingly loud from the inside. Jesse tried to wrap his jacket tighter while watching the doors swing to a close, the sliver of light whittling away and vanishing with a resolute thud. Emi barked wildly even after it ceased, her body lighting up a little.

“Hanzo?” he said, watching Hanzo’s alarmed frown awash in the sharp blue glow. “I don’t like this.”

“Emi can light the way. You and Towa stay—”

Yet another round of gears cut him off, but much gentler and distant. Jesse heard it coming from above, and glanced up just in time to see a bright slit emerge on a slanting face of the wall above the doorway, dilating inch by inch until he was looking into the western sky through a large square window, a speck of cloud drifting lazily across.

Hanzo squinted at the sudden glare. Emi’s head was caught in the light and seemed to be panicking less. It was angled to capture some illumination for the bridge when the sun was setting, Jesse decided, and right now the shaft of light glided over them and landed some distance away, on the part of the bridge branching towards the right side of the chamber.

Where a towering marble statue of a man stood basking in the glimmer.

“Is that…?”

“Yes,” Jesse said. “I think it is.”

The statue was a uniform pearl white and standing at least twice as tall as Jesse. The man was bald with a bushy beard framing his strong jaw and clean chin, defiant eyes looking right into the sun. He was dressed in a tight-fitting robe with fabric wrapped around his waist and neck. Wrapped in one hand was the shaft of a comically-sized sledgehammer studded with spikes resting on the base, a book laying open in the other, a pigeon and a stalk of gladiolus flower resting on its pages. A collection of ornaments dangled in a bundle from his waist: a pendant of a griffin, a moon-crested wand and a small winged staff coiled with two snakes. He tiptoed behind the statue and, sure enough, spotted the asterisk-shaped tattoo with a different pattern on all six ends, carved into the crown of his head in a striking red.

The figure before him had a build remarkably stronger than Jesse remembered, his edges calloused with age, but there was no mistaking the man beneath that beard and those unyielding eyes.

“So this is Balderich The Blessed.” _What’s with the scary hammer though?_

Hanzo harrumphed uncharacteristically. “He can bless me with that chest, if truth be told.”

Jesse full-on stared. “Really? Of all the times you’re thirsting out _now_?”

“You’re thinking it too, I just said it out loud.” Hanzo narrowed his eyes at him. “But what do you mean, of all the times?”

“That is _not_ a matter of discussion right now.”

“All I am saying is that if you told me he looks like this I would probably need less convincing.”

“What _did_ you think he looks like?”

“Not this.” Hanzo eyed the sculpture up and down. “But a statue… he isn’t dead, is he?”

“No one said you have to be dead to have your statue made, y’know.” But the mere suggestion made Jesse queasy. “Though how an apothe—”

A door on the far end of the bridge swung open. A tall silhouette stood against the frame where a warm orange glow poured out. It was just one man, unarmed as far as he could tell, but Hanzo half-heartedly drew his bow all the same.

That was when he saw Emi staring pointedly ahead, nose twitching and muscles relaxed, almost in anticipation.

“Hanzo? What’s going on?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Hanzo said. “She thinks he is…friendly?”

“He? Balderich?”

“I don’t know. Doesn’t look bald to me.”

The person started towards them in slow but firm steps. Emi turned towards them with a most curious expression, then turned back at the approaching shadow.

Hanzo gave Jesse’s hand a tap. “No matter this Balderich person is here or not, let me do the talking. I want to keep it just between us and the sorcerer himself.”

The man’s heavy footfalls echoed in the hall. Towa whined softly and stuck her head out of his jacket. Jesse tried to blink away the gloom as he closed in.

“Magnificent,” said a gruff, accented voice.

He stepped into the light. A giant of a man, his snowy white mane and full beard rivaled Hanzo’s, a blank milky orb in place of his left eye beneath a large scar slashed across his brow and halfway down his cheek. He was wearing a crown and draped in a modest but regal turquoise coat laced with gold. A sheathed sword hung heavily on his side, but his hands were nowhere close. He rubbed them together lightly while fixing his eye on Emi.

He slipped off his white gloves. His face was one of gleaming wonder, and Jesse could hear his breathing escalate. “May I?” the man said, and raised a palm in Emi’s direction.

For a second Emi simply stared at the man. Then she leaned forward to sniff the hand that could barely fit around her nose, and finally nudged her snout against it. An almost gleeful gasp escaped him. Hanzo stared, incredulous.

“I thought I had lived past my time to see such a creature, but this...” The man broke into a wide smile, gently rubbing his hands on Emi’s chin. “How wonderful. And you must be the master.”

Hanzo blinked, the man’s acknowledgment lurching him back into his body. “Yes.” He silently stashed the arrow back into his quiver. “Who _are_ you?”

“Ah, forgive me. Your delightful friend has charmed me into forgetting my manners.” He reluctantly parted his gaze. “Reinhardt Wilhelm, lord of Adlersbrunn Castle at your service, mister…?”

“Hanzo. Shimada Hanzo. This here is my partner, Jesse McCree.”

He studied Jesse for no longer than a couple of seconds, and said with a little grin: “Oh, I know who this gentleman is, Mister Hanzo. We go way back.”

“We do?” Jesse was flung out of space.

Emi licked the lord’s hand once, and jogged back to Hanzo’s side. “Do you remember who made you that little spur on your gun, McCree?”

Jesse frowned. “It was—”

It was an ironsmith boy, he wanted to say, but he dug deeper and found what had been bugging him since he heard his name. It was an ironsmith boy, a blonde lad not much older than he was, bare-chested and muscley, sweating as he worked in an armory of a small town where Jesse stayed with his gang while waiting for someone, a small town named—

Eichenwalde.

“Holy shit.” He stopped just short of screaming. “Reinhardt? _That_ Reinhardt?”

“Which Reinhardt?” Hanzo asked.

Reinhardt guffawed. “The Reinhardt who got utterly fascinated by the cowboy vampires that rolled into town some thirty years ago, and was too naive to realize he was being knocked on by the someone coming into the armory where he worked and asking for a gun upgrade.”

Hanzo glared at him with sheer bewilderment. Jesse could feel himself turning beet red.

“Don’t worry,” Reinhardt said. “That was long in the past. We live in a small world, that’s all. I’m more surprised an Okami and a vampire would turn up on my doorstep this time of year, even more so together.”

“We are here to see Balderich,” Hanzo said with all the courtesy and subtlety of a cactus.

“Yes, that I gathered.” He fell quieter. “You heard about Balderich from your people? I don’t recall ever seeing you.”

Hanzo caught on quick. “I came on behalf of the tribe, yes. I learned about the things he had done to save some of our scouts. Thought I should greet him myself and offer my thanks.”

“That does sound like him.” Reinhardt chuckled softly. “You have no idea how many others came knocking, strangers far and wide, all with stories to tell.”

“We _can_ see him, right?” Jesse asked.

“Oh, he would be honored to hear you’ve come all the way,” he said, to Jesse’s utmost relief. “Follow me.”

*

Beyond the door laid a warm and welcoming guest hall, with couches spruced up alongside a hearthfire beneath a painting of the lush countryside. A monitor on the desk was displaying the time and weather outside. The firewood smelled minute-fresh, and the walls had the air of fairly recent refurbishment. They crossed one of the two archways at the end of the perfume-scented room and arrived at a sparsely decorated corridor. Jesse gestured at the lord’s back as they walked, to which Hanzo gave a hesitant nod.

“So,” he started, growing nervous when Reinhardt settled his pace beside him. “How did a ironsmith apprentice end up owning a castle?”

“And become familiar with my wolf so quickly?” Hanzo said. Jesse mouthed at him: _really?_

“I assure you, Mister Hanzo, that I have nothing but awe and respect for your beasts, but I happen to be able to answer both questions together. You see, McCree, when we met crafting wasn’t the only apprenticeship I was taking. My father was friends with the town apothecary, and his son was the best sorcerer Eichenwalde has ever seen.”

“Balderich,” Jesse said quietly. “You learned magic too?”

“That I did. Balderich had a handful of students, but I was the only one who came through with the Hollow’s trial.”

“That doesn’t explain why Emi was so freely drawn towards you. She never went easy on strangers, even those Hollowed.”

Reinhardt laughed politely. “I was getting there. You see, the study of arcane arts brought us to many places across the world, and Hollowed ethology became somewhat a hobby of mine. Cataloging species affected by the Breach. Dull, I know, but the sightings you get are fascinating. Hippocampi, forest nymphs, the garuda. I even went to Nippon once, your ancestral land, and fought a tengu on a boar. I still have its mask hanging in my chamber. Scares my servants half to death.

“As for your wolf being approachable, I cannot say why, other than perhaps her keen perception of those heavily in touch with the spiritual realm. Even Hollowed humans fear the unknown. If there’s anything we have learned in the two centuries since the Breach, it’s that the Hollow-fed and Hollowed creatures are no more dangerous than bad people with swords and guns. I simply make my faith known to those who speak our language, just not in the same tongue.”

A long silence followed. They turned at a corner and found themselves back beneath the dusklight and the evening chill, scaling a passage on the side of the castle with open windows that overlooked the snowy plains.

“What about her?” Reinhardt glanced at Towa with her tongue lolling out. “A peculiar little thing. Is she from the tribe as well?”

“She, uh...”

Hanzo swooped in. “I found her in the mountains, orphaned. Jesse insisted we take care of her, and a few days later she began glowing. Maybe she became Hollowed in our company.”

“Hmm.” He stroked his beard. “That is quite unheard of. But one can never be certain about the Hollow.”

“The castle!” Jesse suggested rather eagerly. “How did it even fall to a sorcerer like you? No offense.”

“None taken,” Reinhardt said heartily. “I would have the same question myself. This place was built to be a fort right after the Breach, to prevent demons from reaching down south. Obviously it did not stop them, but it had been the military’s stronghold ever since. The _Bundeswehr_ , we call it. Things were pretty quiet around here right after the Knight's Watch sealed the Breach, so it soon became a landmark of Eichenwalde. I’m surprised you didn’t visit during your stay.” He paused, eyes downcast. “But that was before the solstice raid.”

Jesse remembered the raid like it was yesterday. The chaos when everyone realized the new demons only attacked the Hollowed and Hollow-fed, the nations declaring martial law as quarantines were set in place. Protests so loud it drifted across the desert into Deadlock Grove. Gloom and anger smeared across the radio waves and swearing vengeance on the cursed. The gang was pretty much in shutdown during the time, and Jesse figured that was when he mastered his aim out of fear.

“Lot of countries blamed us for failed containment. The Frostlands was pressured into reinstating a defense force even before the raid ended. The government founded the Crusaders unit, and drafted the best among the strong-willed and able-bodied in the country to wield their weapons.”

“The big-ass hammer,” Jesse recalled.

“Yes, the hammers. I would not be surprised if you are not familiar. The army didn’t want any of their tech falling into other hands and kept to itself.” He coughed. “But that was how Balderich and I were enlisted in the army. Five years of training, and we had been stationed here ever since.”

“But if you were supposed to be the first line of defense, shouldn’t you be positioned closer to the Breach?” Hanzo asked.

Reinhardt said nothing. He led them up a flight of stairs, through a stone archway and onto a balcony frosted with snow. Over the ridge laid mountains beyond mountains, flat but sprawling hills capped in white, with the occasional patch of forest sprouting from sunken valleys. Jesse followed Reinhardt’s pointed finger to a spot between two jagged peaks, where he could see—

Nothing. The peaks looked like a V-section perfectly carved out of a mountain summit, the woods underneath ending in an almost-circle where a crater had been paved with snow.

A shudder ran down Jesse’s back. “That was the Breach?”

“Where it used to be.” Reinhardt drummed his fingers on the railing, and stopped when Towa let out a tiny sneeze. “Come on, just a few more steps. Wouldn't want her to catch a cold.”

They returned to their path, the wind trailing behind. “Most of the townspeople fled after the raid. Poor folks had their homes and their livelihood abandoned. Trading was hard for the next couple of years and never really recovered. A few good people stayed behind to provide for those of us living in the castle, so you can imagine how we felt after everything that happened since.”

Jesse pondered on his words. _What_ happened since?

“Eventually even the mayor decided to leave. The army couldn’t find someone in position to hand over the castle to, so they entrusted it to Balderich’s care. He kept the place running while training our battalion. Made some modifications, spruced the place up, trying to make it respectable.”

Jesse nodded, but Reinhardt didn’t seem to notice. He only sighed deeply and looked at the ground. Out of the corner of Jesse’s eye he saw Hanzo’s head suddenly perk up.

“That was before the burden fell on my shoulders once the second solstice raid was over.”

“Hold up,” Jesse said. Hanzo opened his mouth, but decided to drop it and let Jesse continue. “There was a second raid?”

Reinhardt’s face crumpled into a perplexed frown. “They hid that from the people too? But yes, it was a demon assault all over again. Eight years after the first and less overwhelming, but it cost us everything to hold them at bay.” His voice was pained. “God knows what the government told the rest of the world about the battle. I would not have his accomplishment covered up by some stupid politics.”

Jesse’s instincts were tingling. “Whose accomplishment?”

Reinhardt gave him a look like he just asked what year it was. “Why, Balderich's, of course. Ah, here we are.”

They stopped in front of a wooden fence with green tendrils crawling all over. The door was fastened with a simple hinge.

“Reinhardt,” Hanzo called.

“Yes?” The door fanned open at his touch.

“Why isn’t Balderich tending to the castle himself?”

Reinhardt froze. When he turned towards them the light had disappeared from his eye.

“Is this a jest?” he asked.

Jesse never gave him the answer. He was drawn towards the sudden flash of green peering through the door that had creaked to a stop. What greeted him was a garden of sorts, with planters and shrubs and a pavilion overrun by grapevines. Yellow flowers bloomed and rained on the fountain that stood in the middle of the tiled path. The thing that caught his eyes sat on the other end of the garden, a large ornate wooden throne sitting on a gloriette.

Where a golden suit of armor was laid to rest, stoic and lifeless and glimmering in the sun.


	14. In The Hall of The Mountain King

Jesse trailed his fingers down the claws on the armor, the metal almost warm against his skin. There was nothing but darkness behind the visor. It slumped there like a monument, basking in the dying light shattered by the leaves, watching the heavens beyond the glass roof dissolve into an inky chasm. Balderich must've been gone, but there was something about the armor's stance that felt like a breath of life that lingered, like it would awaken any second under his touch.

"If you had not kept this a secret from the start I wouldn't have to lead you all the way through the castle, yes?"

"You said yes when we said we wanted to see Balderich!"

"Yes, as in paying your respects! How the hell am I supposed to know if you have no idea someone is dead for years?"

"Maybe refrain from referring to an empty armor like someone _not_ dead for years?"

Stunned silence. Jesse glanced nervously at Reinhardt's balled fist.

“I apologize,” Hanzo said with a mere whisper. “I spoke out of bounds.”

“Yes, you did.” Reinhardt seethed, and exhaled what remained of his anger. “But there are more pressing matters right now.”

They both turned to look at Jesse. Specifically the pup on his chest, who had fallen asleep and sunken into his jacket save for one twitching ear.

"Do you know what happened?" Hanzo asked. "Maybe it's the same kind of magic—"

"Hollow magic is the same everywhere," Reinhardt said, then more solemnly: "May I?"

Jesse fished out the blanket and placed it in his cupped hands. They were so comically large Towa fit snugly inside his palms.

"I've heard of this Magister O'Deorain." He petted Towa's neck with a remarkable tenderness. "And the things she had done. This could not be anything other than an extraction."

"Extraction of?"

"Her aura, her soul, her _chi_ , whatever you call it. The piece of the spirit realm inside her that binds your people together, binds her to your gods. That’s likely what the magister was after. _Your_ chi."

"And she's gonna use it how?" Jesse asked.  
  
"Oh, do not underestimate the power that flows in a pure-blood Okami, McCree. Especially one from a royal bloodline who wields control over two spirit creatures. The Breach had brought into the world quite enough of this energy, and fear ages into curiosity ages into greed. If one handshake or even being in the vicinity of a Hollowed entity gives someone the ability to see beyond their own realm, imagine what a ruthless sorcerer could do with the _chi_ of a being descended directly from a god.”

Reinhardt raised Towa up to eye level. “I have never heard of that beam you described, but whatever it was it must have failed to receive the _chi_ of a fully spiritual being, or something too much larger than a person. Either way it overloaded and tripped some kind of failsafe that trapped your wolf in this state. Frankly speaking this is the most optimistic outcome of your encounter. Other than the attack never happening in the first place, that is.”

Hanzo took Towa into his arms, kissing the top of her head as he spoke. "And now we have to figure out some way to steal her chi back from the witch?"

"No, actually, that would be most troublesome," Reinhardt said. Hanzo's eyes lit up.

"As I said, she is a fully spiritual being. If you were struck by that beam you would be rendered powerless and mortal, but taking away her _chi_ would kill her, in a sense of the word. She would simply cease to be. But now it would seem the beam was not enough for that level of damage, so she should still be fully bound to the Hollow, even if she is in no state to access it." Reinhardt conjured up a tablet from his pocket. "A rather simple recovery, actually. A few drops of your blood mixed with vitriol dust, and a basic realignment spell. Just to enchant the blood, since you are not technically Hollow-fed. I'll jot this down for—"

“'That's it?” Jesse asked. "But you're a sorcerer too! You can do it right here?"

Reinhardt looked up from his screen and wetted his lips. "That would not be possible."

Hanzo glowered. "What? Is this a money thing?"

"Do I look like someone this dishonorable to you?" He scowled, then made a dejected sigh. "I wish it was that simple."

Jesse rested a hand on Reinhardt's arm. He didn't shy away.

"There comes a time during every sorcerer's training where one has to make a final leap." Reinhardt turned towards Balderich's remains. "One last step to prove your devotion. We call it the Hollow's trial. You bring yourself in front of wherever the veil is weakest and the spirits stir. I was saved the trouble of looking for such a place. The apex of the world's Hollow energy was just three hours of hiking away."

Jesse unconsciously followed Reinhardt's gaze out of the window, where the world beyond crossed into theirs and took a chunk out of it.

“The Hollow demands...no, not a sacrifice. A tribute. To seal the pact with what lies beyond our realm we must be willing to bear its mark.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. His crown nearly slipped with the dip of his head. “They say the Hollow chooses the mark for you. But I believe in its divine knowledge. It knows what you loathe to lose, and makes it your anchor. Or your vulnerability.

"That tattoo on the back of Balderich's head? That was his bind. It was an ancient rune of healing and dexterity and strength in character, but he didn't carve it himself. It was endowed by the Hollow when he passed his trial, plus two full weeks of lying in bed in pain. A bind on the head grants wisdom and understanding of the arcane, but also plagues the wearer with thoughts and whispers that took him years to repress. I laughed when I heard about it because how convenient, I said, that the Hollow picked for him the one part of his body that he can never bear to lose. Because the bind was the umbilical cord between sorcerers and the spirit realm, very much like Achilles’ heel. Mangle it enough and the connection gets all wonky like a loose wire. Lose it..." He bit his lower lip. "And you are as good as exiled from the Hollow."

"Your left eye," Jesse said. "Your bind was in your left eye."

Reinhardt chuckled mirthlessly. "The rune of perception and courage. Seer of darkness and truth, the oracle of Eichenwalde, the speaker of the dead. Ironic, is it not? How it shows you glimpses just enough to make you a prophet and managed to leave out the worst of it. I didn't even see Balderich in my visions of the raid until after I stepped over the demons’ bodies and saw him lying on his throne, bleeding out of his guts. No, it was after I checked his missing pulse that I see him stabbed in the side by a clawed demon, trying to hold in the blood as he stumbled to the throne, and again, and again and again. It was almost a mercy when it crawled over the edge and slashed my eye out."

Reinhardt sunk onto the steps, his breathing sharp and heavy as they whisked through the cage of his fingers. Jesse grew nervous when Hanzo approached, but he sat down next to Reinhardt without a word. Towa licked on Reinhardt’s hand and made him looked up, until he finally gave her head a tousle.

“I’m sorry you have to see this.” He drew a deep, shaky breath. “People send their condolences and kind words, but the lord of the castle couldn’t be seen a grieving mess. I don't even know what Balderich hopes of me sometimes. But he would offer you whatever help he can give. That I know. And that is what I will do.”

He started tapping on his tablet. Jesse stood there watching Hanzo tend to the pup, letting his own thoughts run.

"What about my blood?"

They turned towards him, Hanzo's brow already creasing in disapproval.

"What about it?" Reinhardt asked.

"You said all she needs is enchanted blood. Would Hollow-fed blood do?"

Reinhardt tightened his jaw, watching Towa. "Yes, technically it would be enough to restore her spiritual state, but it would be a huge gamble. We could look into it if we are talking about a satyr or even a werewolf, but a vampire..." He gave Jesse a sorry look. "It would be uncharted territory in blood magic. Best not tread in something we do not understand. Also, you must have heard about the Moon God's blessing."

"The protection thing? But I thought it only affects people who meant to do harm?"

“Tsukuyomi is not a jury, Jesse,” Hanzo said with pursed lips. "The curse seeks blood, not technicalities. I would not allow you to endanger yourself for my cause."

"What if it's just—"

“Enough of this,” he snapped. "We are listening, Lord Wilhelm."

Reinhardt cleared his throat. "Up here, in Victory Island, there is an acquaintance of Balderich's that works in his own weapons company. Or my goddaughter Brigitte, here in Regalia. Either one of them should be more than willing to help if you bring up my name."

Hanzo blinked. "These are near the North pole. My people—"

“Is waiting for you to return from a successful conquest, not a detour. You have come too far to turn back now.” Reinhardt held his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye. "Do not give this Magister O'Deorain her victory."

Hanzo wrapped the map in his arm and sighed. "I don't—"

A sharp stab of pain made Jesse seethe and double over. The throbbing in his arm returned with a vengeance. When his head had recovered from the flash that shot up his arm he found himself down on his knees, Hanzo stooped by his side. Reinhardt loomed over them with Towa in his arms, barking fiercely.

"What's wrong, Jesse?" He felt a twinge of equal parts comfort and embarrassment when he felt Hanzo's hand on the small of his back.

Reinhardt crouched and gestured to the bandage on his forearm. "I take that is not a simple flesh wound?"

"It was just a cut," Hanzo said. "We were fighting someone from Talon back in Vinnyberg and Jesse was injured with a broken mirror—"

Reinhardt's jaw went taut. "A silver mirror?"

Jesse avoided Hanzo's questioning gaze.

"Take his bandage off."

"It's nothing," Jesse protested. "The silver didn't even go in. A flesh—"

“McCree.” Reinhardt's voice hardened.

Jesse propped up his arm as Hanzo untied the knot. He heard Hanzo's sharp gasp and risked a peek that he immediately regretted. The wound had shrunk into a narrow diamond-shaped incision, but it was a sickly-looking green that had begun to spread like a spider web and run down a thick vein heading for his elbow. "Ah, fuck" was all he managed as Reinhardt returned Towa to her master and held up Jesse's wrist.

"I never wanted to kill you so bad," Hanzo growled at him.

"At this rate, you don't have to," Reinhardt said gravelly. "This is bad, McCree. Salvageable, but bad."

"Don't you have any healers in the castle?"

"A silver poisoning requires something way beyond a human nurse, Mister Hanzo. I can give you some serum to slow your blood flow, but if you can't find a sorcerer before the end of the month your arm has to go, McCree. That, my healer can do."

Jesse sat there, reeling. Hanzo stared at him with a stricken face.

"That leaves you no choice but to pay Brigitte a visit. Adhabu would be delighted for your limb to waste away so he could sell you prosthetics." Reinhardt heaved Jesse up with the ease of lifting a plastic doll. It startled him to see night had descended, the stars and sky a silent procession behind Balderich on his throne.

"I was hoping to have you for dinner," Reinhardt said with tight-lipped worry. "But it appears that time is not working in your favor, my friend."

 

*

 

The chill reached down Jesse’s spine when the castle gates clanked shut behind them. Hanzo bundled up Towa’s sheets, rocking her as he gazed into the mountains.

“Long night ahead.”

The full moon hung over the skyline with a sweeping brilliance caught in the winter earth like a meadow covered with crystals. The desaturated snowscape brought up Emi’s glow as she sprinted off the castle grounds. She stopped right where the concrete ended, barking at the frostfalls.

“If it's too cold we can wait out the night.”

“This is nothing.” Hanzo looked at him, stony-eyed. “Taking care of your arm is first priority now.”

“Look, don’t worry about it.”

“I can’t,” he said, a jut of hair covering the edges of his stern eyes. “I dragged you into the fight. I dragged you into this whole affair. I cannot let you return home missing a limb.”

Jesse smiled at him. “What can I say? A promise’s a promise.” He raised his arm, now wrapped in tight white cloth. “I can't pit our lives against my hand, right?”

He stared at Jesse for a heartbeat too long, then tore his eyes to the ground. “You don’t have to try and make me feel better. " He held Jesse's arm and flipped it over to the wounded side. Jesse could have a sworn he felt a tiny skip in his chest. "I should have been more careful. I dragged you through the muck. None of this should have happened."

"Hey, hey," Jesse said, so tempted to reach for his face that softened for the first time since their night in the gas station. "If anything you brought me out of that shithole. You're the reason I'm out here in the world, going places and meeting people and living a life I never knew I could. I regret nothing."

Say it. _Say it._

"It's been an adventure with you."

_You fucking chicken._

Hanzo squeezed out a relieved smile and stared at his feet again. “That sounds good enough.”

Towa squirmed her way out of the sheets. She whined at Jesse, then licked Hanzo’s fingers, then back at him again. A faint pink creep up Hanzo’s cheeks.

“We should get going,” he said hurriedly. “We can have some of Reinhardt’s beef jerky on the way.”

Jesse trailed behind his footsteps towards the courtyard.  Emi was still barking at the air. Jesse gave her a pat on the hind.

“What’s up, girl?”

She spared him a fleeting glance before kneeling down, growling.

“I know, I know. We’ll find somewhere to stop once we’re closer, alright?” He hauled himself onto Emi’s back, received the blankets from Hanzo and boosted him up.

“Which way?” Hanzo asked.

“Straight up back the round hill. We can turn from there into the forest and head north.”

Emi marched off, white specks immediately gathering on her fur. Hanzo shoulders were slumped as he swayed with every step. Jesse shimmied closer, convincing himself it was just to keep Towa warm, his breath fogging dangerously close to Hanzo’s neck—

A shudder shot up his back.

“Hanzo.”

“Yes?” he said dully.

“Get your arrows.”

Hanzo’s head snapped back, questions flashing across his face as Emi skidded on her tracks. They leaped down onto the piling snow, Jesse watching their back as Hanzo nocked his bow.

"You smelled something?" Hanzo whispered.

"It's the same thing when we crossed the gate earlier this morning, but way stronger now." Jesse stowed Towa away in his jacket to free his hands. He could hear the blood rushing in his skull. "I don't think it's Reinhardt's magic. It's making my skin crawl. You feel nothing?"

Hanzo shook his head. "Stay with both of them. I'll scan the perimeter."

"Let Big Boss go with you at least."

"Yes, that would be quite the stealthy approach. Just keep them quiet before I come back."

Hanzo skulked off into the snow. Jesse tried to soothe Towa stirring in her sheets, made all the more difficult with Emi's course growling. The wind's howl blotted out Hanzo's footfalls, his wavering figure obscured by the flurry.

He looked at Emi. Emi looked back. Her barks were persistent, worrying. _I told you so_ , they seemed to say. Panic swelled in his guts.

"I'll just be on the lookout for him, 'kay?" he shouted at Emi. "Stay where you are."

He tottered to the side where a rocky mound pinched off into the mountains behind them, shielding his eyes from the falling ice above and the glaring whiteness below. _He couldn't have gone far—_

The bottom of his boots connected with solid ground. He looked down to see a dark stripe painted across the earth, stretching on in a smooth arc when he kicked away the snow on its course. He slipped off a glove and brushed his fingers over the flaky substance, bringing it to his nose.

Blood.

"Jesse?" Hanzo emerged from the gloom. "What is that?"

"Get on Emi." Jesse burst into a run. "Now!"

The ground beneath them lit up before Hanzo could lift his feet. A maze of sinister red light shooting out of labyrinthine lines, gleaming beneath the layer of snow that carpeted the barren expanse between the castle and the stone arch. Jesse’s eyes shot to Hanzo, his white hair drenched in the color of blood, the outline of his figure a ghastly shadow in the ominous glow.

Watching in horror as Emi slammed to the ground with a furious thud.


	15. Bloodbound

Hanzo's shrill cries pierced the night, but Jesse was too frozen to move, the sight of the enormous tendrils that twisted around Emi's body slamming all his danger buttons. They were pulsating a cautious red as they sprouted from the ground and whipped through the air, coiling around the wolf's jaw when she tried to chew off the one wrapped around her front limb. Another snapped at Hanzo's feet as he ran towards Emi, narrowly missing and whisking up a geyser of snow. He sent an arrow flying. It passed through the tendrils as effortlessly as it had passed through the wolf.

"What in the world is that?" Hanzo sprung away as another tendril erupted beneath him.

"I don't know," he stammered, his wits fleeing him. He tried to muffle Towa's barks with his jacket. "Some blood magic..."

They stormed on Hanzo relentlessly as he retreated further and further away from Emi. Jesse could not stifle his shout when one caught Hanzo's quiver and lifted him up. He writhed free from the strap and landed on his feet, holding on to a handful of arrows. The tendril smashed it on the mountainside and rained splinters on the ground.

"I'll distract this thing," Hanzo said with a short breath. "Go see if Reinhardt has any—"

“And drag the poor hermit into our lil’ affair? What did your mom tell ya about leavin' the elderly alone?”

Chilled air swamped Jesse's lungs. He wanted to grab Hanzo and run off into the dark, but not here. Not from her.

When he turned towards the voice he saw four hazy outlines standing in a row, the snow and wind distorting them into mere shadows from the blunt moonlight. The tendrils hovered over Hanzo, whose bewildered eyes were shifting between them. When the figures finally moved they were led by the one in the middle that strutted and swayed all the way.

He’d recognize that afro blow-out anywhere.

"Never been better to see you, kid." The boss said, her lips as distractingly shiny as ever.

"Jesse?"

Jesse hugged his midsection, hoping to hide the lump in his belly. "What are you doing here?"

"Shit, no hugs and kisses for your boss?" she said, feigning a pout. "It's been soooo long. The gang's been missin' ya, y'know?"

Jesse eyed the three men lined behind her. A white dude sporting a buzzed head, a spectacled man with a horribly disfigured cheek, and a baldie whose scalp was covered with the pattern of a rose, his eyes gleaming an unnatural light.

The tavern. The casino. The bar.

_Devil’s fucking ass._

"Jesse," Hanzo called, his voice betraying his calm. "Who are they?"

The Boss leaned in and nudged Jesse's uninjured elbow with her dagger's wooden scabbard. The whole of his upper body stiffened under the touch. She lowered her voice: "He still doesn't know, does he? So you do have some act in ya."

"Guys," he said, inching backward. "I don't think you know who you're dealing—"

He stopped when his gaze fell on the boss' hands. She had brought along her pair of red gloves, but they were dangling from fingers on the hand without her dagger. Her palms were shockingly pale, her fingers delicate and nails trimmed, and—

Tattoos.

The back of her hands were covered in tattoos that burned like the world's most intricate scorch mark. Geometrical shapes and patterns were mapped on the dorsal area, runes carved on every joint of her fingers, singing to him an almost demonic song.

She caught his stare. “Pretty, huh? Don’t think I ever showed this to anyone back in the grove, come to think of it.” She balled a fist, and the firelight blazed. “Never really found a use.”

“And this?” he gestured at the lights bleeding through the snow.

“Oh, just a blood cast. Pretty much gives me these sweet tentacles to work with. Heightens senses and weakens anything not of vampire blood.”

Jesse almost choked on the air, remembering the sharp tingle he felt stepping on the castle grounds. He tried to shoot Hanzo a warning glance but all he had on his face was a tangible fury, his arrow pointing in their direction.

“Release her,” Hanzo demanded. The tendrils stirred restlessly above him. “Or this will be in your brain.”

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sweetie," she said. "My friend here can have a bullet in _your_ brain before it could leave the string. Actually, all of our brains, if he wanted."

 _The Deadeye?_ Jesse always thought it was just another of the biker's tall tales, a right-place-right-time story blown out of proportions. But the bald man already had his fingers poised above his holster where a shiny six-shooter laid, his eye a deadly sheen.

"Hanzo, trust me, don't make him take—"

“'Trust me'?” Hanzo croaked. Jesse looked at him and nearly flinched at his glassy stare, his pointed look of betrayal. "You have the nerve to say ' _trust me_ '?"

"You do have to forgive our Jesse," she started, and Jesse found himself washed with the mindless urge of slashing her throat with her own dagger. "You leave him no choice, remember? Somebody saw your pet fetch him along like a piece of meat. What else would ya expect a man at his wit's end do?"

"What do you want from him?" Jesse asked. "You said you only wanted the wolf."

"Don't you _dare_."

“Oh, that would be thanks to you, Jesse,” she said as if Hanzo wasn’t there. “I mean, we really only our eyes on the wolf. After Talon told us what went down we figured we ain’t gonna bite off what we can’t chew, y’know? But then my folks saw them march off with you in tow, alive, so we all thought, ‘hey, the kid might be up to something.’ We told Talon about it and they went nuts, I tell ya, said they’ll give us four times the pay if we bring both of ‘em back alive.

“It was all easy work after that. A cowboy vampire and a white-headed punk ain’t too hard to track, y’know? We figured you could’ve only been heading where we had gone on our last trip so the lot of us just rushed all the way north, and hope you’d make it into town. And boy,” she clicked her tongue. “I sure am glad you did. That was some good thinking, I’ll give ya that.”

Jesse’s face went numb, the boss’ consoling smile punching him in the guts. He couldn’t bring himself to confront Hanzo’s terrible, terrible silence.

“So you know about his deal with Talon all along,” he said quietly. “And all that ‘I believe in you’ talk? That’s bullshit too?”

She blinked, then made an almost apologetic click of her tongue. “Look, don’t take it personally, kid. The whole gang knows you’re a lost cause. I was the one who went ‘ey, let him take a shot at this.’ And see? What did I tell ya?” She said to her henchmen, whose faces might as well be carved from ice.

“Now that you got us…” she flicked her finger on Jesse’s belly, making Towa squirm. “...this, just sit back and let us handle the rest, alright kid? You’ll get your present when we’re done.”

Everyone turned to Hanzo with his arrow. _Wait_ , Jesse mouthed, _don’t_. If Hanzo read him he showed no sign, just unbridled hatred as he retreated into the cliffside.

“Boss?” The bald man said.

“No. If you shot his head instead of his leg we’re gonna have one helluva mess to clean up.” She tossed her gloves to him. “I’mma see how good this one is.”

Hanzo took one cold, crushing look at Jesse. Jesse wanted so badly to tell him how he was never a part of these lies—

But he couldn’t. The boss’ words echoed in his head, reeking of his cowardice.

She snapped her fingers and the tendrils rushed towards Hanzo at once, slamming into the ground and crumpling into a heap where he had dashed swiftly away. He swiped at the grounded tendrils with what looked like the recurve of his bow. Just as Jesse thought it would sail harmlessly across he heard them make a splotchy hiss, writhing and limping on the snow. Hanzo charged towards Emi, a newly-produced blade on the tip of his bow glinting in the light.

“Someone’s full of surprises,” she said, smiling. “Byron? Wanna give him a go?”

“Gladly.” Scarface—Byron—unsheathed what was supposed to be his walking stick and produced a shiny _falx_. Hanzo was busy slashing away at Emi's muzzle, stumbling when one shot up from the ground to replace the old. Byron descended on him with a roar, his sickle falling and turned aside by Hanzo's bow with dizzying speed. Hanzo struggled beneath the weight of his blows and shifted his stance away from them.

Towa barked in Hanzo's direction with little more than hiccups drowned by the wind. _Do something!_ , she seemed to cry, and Jesse felt her trembling little body down to his guts.

_Make some use of them, you piece of shit._

But it dawned on him how powerless he was against four armed vampires. Jesse listened to the clashing of metals, never so badly dying for his gun. Why hadn’t he thought of a spare arm for a situation like this?

 _But Hanzo did,_ the thought struck him.

Keeping his body still he reached for his chest and, bless the gods, felt the swiss army knife sitting inside his jacket's inner lining. He pulled out the icy metal, flicking open the blade with his thumb. _No,_ he decided. _The cork opener._ He glanced at the two men behind him, the bald man with his face of stone and the buzzcut dude stretching with mild disinterest. The latter one did not seem the largest threat. He should aim for the baldie's eye to get that out of the way, but Emi would be able to fight if he could deal with the boss—

"Gettin' riled up, aren't ya?"

Jesse's flesh leaped out of his skin. She was whispering into his ear, breath frosting on his neck. Jesse sucked in a breath to stab her in the neck, but his hands swung up to elbow-length and froze there, the knife suddenly weighing like a stone. Her lips were cherry red, and Jesse saw blood pouring out of them, her eyes twitching as life escaped them and turning a slate gray.

She pressed down on his stiff arm gently. “Trust me, kid, you’ll wanna hand this to the adults. But you’ll get your turn later.”

He returned a mirthless smile. _What turn?_

A deep dread filled his chest as he heard Hanzo yell. Byron was looming over him and swinging down the sickle with a ferocious arc, crashing down on the bow that creaked worryingly. Hanzo bared his teeth as he pressed against the brunt over his face, until Byron twisted the handle and the blade sliced through his jacket, drawing blood instantly. Rosy, mortal blood. Towa howled with a soft crack in her voice. Emi strained against her binds, then slammed back into the snow.

"Hanzo!" A cry burst out of him. The boss raised her eyebrow. As Jesse made his stride towards him he felt a heavy grip on his shoulders. He turned and came face to face with the baldie's ominous glare.

Byron gave him a shove as he forced their weapons apart, sending Hanzo staggering back. He clutched the wound on his collarbone, his face twisting in pain before tossing the lot of them the same defiant look.

"Look," the boss shouted across the empty space between them. "We can do this the easy way, or—"

"Why do you scoundrels like to talk so much?"

Before Hanzo's voice even dropped an arrow was zipping their way with an audible whistle. Jesse turned his back to shield Towa and braced for—

Nothing. He heard nothing but Hanzo's laborious panting and the wind dying into a soft trickle. The arrow was suspended inches from the boss' mildly irritated face, its shaft gripped by a lone tendril rising from the ground. It broke the arrow in two with a crisp snap.

"Alright." She cracked her neck. "we done foolin' around, sweetheart."

Her fingers flexed into a gnarly claw. Tendrils rose from all four sides of Hanzo's ground. He crouched to dodge their whips and tried to swing his bow, until one slammed him right on the face and another wrestled the bow out of his hands. Still he stood, caged in by the devilish arms dancing around him, rubbing his contused cheeks and shielding himself with nothing but his bare hands.

"Yer feisty, I'll give ya that," she said. "But don't make this hard fer yerself."

With a flick of her wrist they attacked his limbs, coiling around his joints before he had the chance to yank them back. They floored him with a heavy flop, spread him open on the ground, jerking him harder and harder until Hanzo's back was arching up. Jesse saw the sheer panic in his eyes as writhed, remembering his story with the magister, remembering what it cost him. Towa's cries were on the verge of cracking.

"Stop." The word slipped past Jesse's tongue before he was conscious of the sound. He felt the men's gaze rest unyieldingly on back.

"Say what?"

"I asked you to stop," he said firmly. Retracting his attitude is a compromise he was not willing to make. "No point in hurting him if Talon wanted him whole."

Another chasm of silence where Hanzo hissed faintly in the background. "You gotta watch that mouth around yer superiors, Jesse," she spoke with a dangerous edge, but loosened her grip nonetheless. Hanzo’s high-pitched noise eased into sharp shallow gasps for air. Emi stared at her master lying on the ground with a painful whine.

 _I’ll rescue him when we’re on the road_ , he thought to himself. _Then we'll run._

_Sure, like how you said you'll steal the wolf and run._

_No more._

Towa lifted her neck. Jesse bent down to kiss the top of her head, muttering into her ear: "Hold on. I'll get you out." He looked up to find the henchmen shooting him dirty looks. The boss twirled the dagger between her fingers.

"So that's it?" He put on his earnest front. "We're headin' home?"

"Oh, now someone's missing his bed?" She walked towards him, still toying with her knife. "Changed yer mind about leavin'?"

Jesse swallowed. "I mean, we still need to sort all this out at the grove, right? I still have some of my stuff back there. Or am I not welcome already?"

"Yer always welcome, kid," she said sweetly. "In fact, the choice to stay is still yours, if you happen to have a change of heart. We just need to deal with something before we drop these two off at Talon. Deal with you, specifically."

Fear bubbled up his head and threatened to crack his act. "What about me?"

Her fingers stopped spinning. She let the dagger drop into her other palm and closed her hand around the hilt. "Ever wonder what a demigod's blood tastes like?"

His mind tuned itself off for a second, choking on the words before he gulped them down forcefully. Towa shrunk back into his jacket, trembling beneath the boss' shadow overcast in the slick midnight glow.

"Not really," he said, fighting his legs to stand ground as she closed in.

"I've heard great things about it. Longevity, accelerated tissue growth..." she eyed him sideways. "...long-term resistance to blood withdrawal."

Jesse released a shaky breath that she probably mistook as amazement.

"I know, right? Just one good long sip and—"

"You can't," Jesse said, and hurriedly explained: "The Okamis are protected by their god. Any poison or magic can't touch them. I've seen it in action."

"The curse, you mean?" she said challengingly. "Yes, we've learned about that the hard way. That’s why I plan to keep the big one the way it is. You probably don't know it protects the pets and not their masters, though."

 _So that one failed._ "But what if it did? It's a huge risk, I'm tellin' ya. We don't know—"

The buzzcut guy stood up straighter and loudly spun the barrel of his revolver. “You take the offer if you know what's best for ya, punk.”

The boss silenced him with a finger. "But we do know." She looked into his eyes, searching and digging. "Ya know what else I know? That you haven't been yerself, Jesse. You think you're good at acting but you're shit at it. The wolf boy must be either blind or stupid to fall for your crap acting. That, or yer tryin' to play both sides, or worse," she paused, and within a flash the tip of her dagger was lodged right above his Adam's apple, scraping his skin as he swallowed. "Yer the traitor around here. Care to tell me which one?"

Jesse kept his eyes trained on her. Beneath the blood roaring in his ears he could only hear Towa's whimpering, and smell the fresh blood wiped off the blade. He used his own breaths to collect himself: one, and two, and one.

"The one that lives," he said with whatever strength he could summon. The boss narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

"Don't take it personally, boss." He clicked his tongue, and was suddenly frightened of the ease in his own voice. "I've seen things along the way. It taught me that if you gonna survive this shit world, you gonna look after your own back or no one else will." He puffed up his courage to push her dagger aside. She offered no resistance whatsoever. "I'll be honest with ya, these wolf people are powerful when I first met them. I don't even know you folks could take them down if it comes to that. You can't blame me for entertaining the possibility of leaning towards the stronger side."

Byron started towards him. "You motherfuckin' little—"

The boss raised her hand again. "Let him finish."

"Listen to your boss, Scarface." Jesse nearly broke from his act when Byron reached for his _falx_ but forced himself down. "Then you guys showed up with axes and guns and a fuckin' blood circle, and I wanted to slap myself, boss, I really do."

"I can still do that for you."

He ignored Byron. "But I can’t drop my act right after you’re here, right?” He chuckled. “At least I know who I can really rely on now."

Jesse put on his most charming smile as she studied his face, utterly unprepared for the first time. Just as he was getting uneasy she burst into a cackling laughter that startled Towa into barking again. Jesse stole a glance at Hanzo, who was still grimacing and tugging on his wrists but had lifted his head to stare.

Jesse was slapped repeatedly on the uninjured arm as her howling died down. He kept his face straight and inquiring.

"Shit," she finally said. "Back from a road trip and you just grew the largest pair in the gang. You little bitches could learn a thing or two," she said to the fuming men. When she looked at Jesse she did it properly, beaming and grabbing both his shoulders like a mother after her son's first day at school. "Seriously though, I like that. I could be sayin' words like that before I took over Deadlock from that shit McKinney, but being the head of a gang makes ya slack off. Shame if that attitude have to leave with ya."

"Guess you'll have to brush up the entire gang's philosophy, then."

"Oh, I'm gonna," she said, letting him go. "But now, your present." She waved her arm at the struggled figure on the ground. "You up for that? Or is all that tough guy talk just talk?"

Jesse balled his fist, feeling the blunt edge of the unfolded knife dig into his hand. The boss was looking at him tauntingly, like there’s still a small part that thought this could all be a big ruse and was looking for any signs to expose him and tear his mask off. He had eased himself away from a corner only to have his back against the wall. The full moon was draped over the starless night, its pearl-colored face impossibly stained by the crimson glow that soaked the earth and reached above the clouds.

_A bloodied moon._

He bit his lip, puncturing it in his carelessness. A decision was made.

"If you say it's safe I'm game." Jesse felt the folds of his palms grow clammy, the cold air squeezing around his wound as a dull pain flared up his forearm. He drew in a deep breath to press it down. _Soon._ “What about you?”

“We can’t suck the merchandise dry,” she said while looking at Hanzo. “But we ain’t missin’ out much. You’re the only one going all pacifist, ‘vegan blood only’ and shit. We’re in for the cash. You did most of the work so don’t feel bad about it.” She grabbed Jesse's hand, pried open his fingers, and handed him her dagger.

"Boss—"

"What's he gonna do? Stab me?" she snapped. "Yer gonna keep your teeth off him, and that sorry little knife of yers more like to stab him to death." Jesse nodded and gave the blade a tentative flip. The metal felt as deadly as it looked. "You wanna hand over the pup?"

Jesse pulled her out of his jacket, tugging on the sheets until on her head showed. "Later. I want him to look his baby in the eye when I do it." The thought alone left a bitter taste in his mouth.

"You monster," she smirked. " _Bon appetit_."

Jesse made his way towards Hanzo, the heavy dagger trembling with his hand. He walked past Emi and found his eyes steering towards the wolf, whose muffled groans could be anything from cursing to praying. _Emi must’ve heard it._

When he stood next to him Hanzo stopped flailing. His apprehensive gaze stung. A trickle of blood was seeping out of a gash on his right cheek. Upon seeing Towa in Jesse's arms he muttered something under his breath. Jesse couldn't tell if Hanzo heard his promise earlier, but between the flashes of anger and alarm he found a pair of pleading eyes.

His words revealed no such nuance. "Touch her and I—"

“And you will skin me alive,” Jesse said with a tight-lipped smile. "Couldn't forget that if I wanted to."

His hazel eyes bore into Jesse's soul. When they found it the taut edges of his face melted away. "Please tell me you know what you are doing, Jesse. Please."

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Jesse dropped on his knees, careful to keep the vampires behind his back and setting Towa down between the two of them. “I’m always trying to know what I am doing. And it never seemed to matter.”

He raised the dagger above his head. Moonlight glinted off its razor sharp edge, the red jewel embedded in the silver pommel almost emitting its own deadly sparkle. “It never mattered because some things are just there, in your blood. Like your stupid goddamned honor and sacrifice for everyone else except yourself,” he chuckled softly. “And my fear. Fear of what could go wrong if I do this or do that, because I never found anyone that made me want to give all of myself away.”

Hanzo’s eye grew wide as Jesse flipped a wiggling Towa on her back with soothing hushes. Absently he tried to sit up before the tendrils yanked him back on the ground. “What are you doing?” he asked as Jesse seized the dagger in his right palm, flexing both of his hands.

“What I could.”

He pressed the blade into his left palm, biting down the hiss. The pain was little more than a sting with his forearm now afire. Dark, viscous blood immediately pooled and streamed into the grains of his palm.

“Yer taking way too long, kid!”

“Jesse.” Hanzo made it sound like a threat. “Don’t. I forbid you.”

He cradled Towa in his arms, her folded paws and lolling tongue reminded him so much of Hank it ached.

“For your own sake, Jesse, don’t do it.”

“You got this all backward Han.” He pried open her jaw with his pinky. “I’m doing it for my own sake.”

Jesse lowered his hand onto Towa’s mouth, saw the first few drops connect into a steady stream—

And was swallowed whole by an all-encompassing blaze of white.

*

The first fleeting moments after the explosion felt purgatorial. Jesse found himself drifting away from his body, floating along with the fuzzy dots that speckled his vision, the voices of the world scrunched into a single buzzing sound. Then somewhere far away his body landed on solid ground and he was yanked back with a force that nearly flattened his chest. He coughed up what air he still had inside. Noises returned to his ears, layers upon layers of nature's songs and discomforting screams.

The flash had disappeared into wherever dead light goes, leaving the dots now splattered on the pink insides of his eyelids. He flicked them open and found the exact same color washed over everything. He squinted shut and opened again; everything was pink. _Am I going blind?_ But then with his eyes open—he assumed—he saw the pink _move_ , shifting upwards like a sheet of cloth, all fuzz and rippling flesh as his vision came back into focus.

Jesse heard a mighty groan. "Hanzo?" he called, fear assaulting him in waves. Hanzo's overcast, bewildered face lurched into view, and Jesse felt the constricting in his ribcage loosen up, then sink back down when a look of horror crept into his eyes,

'' _Bakayarou,_ " he said and went behind Jesse to haul him up by the armpits. The numbness hadn't even registered until now, tiny shocks surging through his torso and limbs and making him yelp.

"What's that?" he asked while being dragged across the snow.

"Idiot. You are a god-damned idiot."

Jesse fought the limp in his neck and raised his head, squinting his eyes at the glowing figure that towered over them.

“Fuckin’ hell, is that—”

“Yeah,” Hanzo heaved. “No thanks to you.”

She was even bigger than Emi if Jesse’s eyes weren’t tricked by the light. Towa had the same markings around the eyes, but they were peach-colored on top of the shimmering red pelt that covered her head to toe. She burned like a dying sun, outshining even the moon and the blood cast that had been flickering out since the tendrils disappeared. Towa pawed at the ground, teeth flashing in a snarl, her head bent low. Emi trod up behind her, sniffing tentatively and nudging the side of her hindquarters, like she couldn't quite come to terms with her sister's new suit, smelling of copper and fire and smoke.  
  
"It worked," he said shakily.  
  
Jesse was propped up against a flat rock. The brim of his hat folded on itself and cushioned the back of his head as Hanzo gingerly set it down, watching him nervously with his disheveled head full of snow. To their right the vampires laid crumpled. trashing and shrieking while scrubbing their eyes out. He heard the boss' curses as she tried and failed to stand.  
  
Slowly the breath returned to Jesse's lungs. His head cleared and stopped spinning. Without a word of warning Hanzo cusped his face in both his silky palms, and Jesse found himself lost in those eyes, everything in the world slogging and foggy as he rode down his adrenaline rush.  
  
He was jolted awake with a slap. "Jesse!"  
  
"Hmm! Right!"  
  
"I am asking if you are hurt elsewhere?" he said with the tone of addressing a child just roused from bed.  
  
"I'm not—"

He felt it then, not pain but rather a terrible lightness dousing him from the shoulder down. He couldn’t move an inch of it. He tried to see, only to have Hanzo clasp his cheeks in a pinch, locking their eyes together. His were misty and bereaved, all that hiding behind a thick frown that tried to look strong.

“How bad?”

“Just...don’t look.”

It was everything Jesse needed to know. He weeped freely, hot tears rolling down his cheeks and turning Hanzo’s face into little crystals. Hanzo wrapped his arms around Jesse’s neck, resting his head on his good shoulder. He groped his working hand on Hanzo’s shredded jacket. The sobs came out raking his throat, but damn if it didn’t felt good.

“Sorry...” he choked. “‘M sorry...”

Hanzo grabbed him tighter. “I wish I was half as brave as you.”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the boss whip out baldie’s revolver, aiming at them groggily. “Now you’ve gone and done it.” She emptied the barrel, the bullets plunging into Emi’s side as she leaped into the way, bouncing off her luminescent blue fur like rubber pellets. Towa let loose a chilling howl, all those pent-up rage in the pup’s tiny body boomed across the hills and making her stagger backward.

  
A familiar grinding sound echoed in the air. A shaft of firelight poured through the castle gate whence they came, illuminating Reinhardt's frozen silhouette. Hanzo boosted Jesse off the ground, wincing apologetically when he brushed Jesse's elbow. "We have to get inside."  
  
"But we can't—"  
  
"Can't leave them behind?" he cocked his brow. "In case you haven't realized, _we_ are the liability here."  
  
Jesse limped his way forward with Hanzo's shoulder beneath his arm, gunshots and feral barks thundering behind them. Reinhardt broke from his trance and ran towards them in his white boots and silken robes that camouflaged nicely in the snow.  
  
" _Scheisse_ ," the ex-sorcerer swore but lingered no further. He scooped a startled Jesse into his arms, and Jesse would later confront Hanzo delightfully about the flash of annoyance that crossed his face.

For the moment they focused on keeping their heads out of the crossfire. Jesse had fought the urge to peek, but still caught a glimpse of the charcoal black log attached to his shoulder and almost gagged. He bounced with Reinhardt's every step, watching the distant blur of red and blue amidst a brilliant display of sparks. Colorful language peppered the screams. He heard a sickening crunch that he could only guess to be a crushed skull.

It could be the rocking motion or the pain, or the warm hues of the sky that announced the breaking of dawn or something else entirely, but Jesse’s eyelids started to droop as they retreated into the underbelly of the castle’s shadow that had never seemed more welcoming.  
  
“You kids have a lot of explaining to do.”

Jesse chuckled drunkenly. “You’re assuming...that any of us knows how this shit works, old man.”

“Jesse McCree, if you die on me I will kill you so hard you will need two graves.”

 _That makes zero sense,_ Jesse thought.

 

And he fell under.

 

 

 


	16. Epilogue

_Here is the boy in a dark wooden shack._

_The orange glow peers through the crevices of the ramshackle walls. It dances as the night spins on, leaping in and out of the pooling shadows that plague the grove. There is a distant crash of wood shattered into splinters. Wails tail after one another in a gut-wrenching symphony._

_The boy perks up at a grown woman’s scream that died as abruptly as a finger snap. Beneath the shade of his round hat his eyes glint in terror, and he tries to wedge himself deeper between the shelves holding glass jars of every shape and size. He bumps into his shoulder and bristles. The cream-colored fabric is ripped and soaked in something dark._

_He watches the boy sitting there, feel the fear radiating off his shivering body, feel the walls closing in and suffocating him._

_“Mother?” he says, softly, almost embarrassed to reach for her._ She’s dead _, he thinks, without even knowing what the boy’s mother looks like. She’s dead, dead without even seeing the mangled body of his husband._

 _The boy’s face hardens. He stands up, grabbing the shelves for support and wincing at the pain. What wretched man_ bites _people? he thinks angrily._

_He hobbles to the door, unlocks it, shoves his hand against the pane, and blinks in surprise when it will not budge. He tugs on the handle instead. The door does not move. He squints through the seam to see it bolted from the outside._

_“Mother? Are you still out there?” he calls. “Mother?”_

_He feels a surmounting panic choking him. The boy slaps the door, only to remember she told him not to make a sound. “Mother?” he says once more, slamming his forehead on the cold wooden planks, and slumps down before the door. He sits there, leaning against the frame with legs outstretched until his thighs grow numb, his shoulder burning, his throat dry._

_He wants to scream._

_But then the boy cocks his head and looks at him through bleary eyes._

_“Hanzo?” he croaks._

Hanzo opened his eyes.

Jesse was watching him from his bed, concerned. When Hanzo blinked he could still see Jesse’s echo, the shrunken figure illuminated by the torch burned into the back of his eyes.

“You okay?” Jesse asked again.

 _Third time now._ Hanzo rubbed his face and rose with a smile. They would talk about the dreams when Jesse was better, he decided.

He was naked from the waist up, the rest tucked beneath a heavy white blanket. Hanzo finally saw the scars strewn across the rolls on his belly spotted with fuzzy black hair, tender patches shaped like gashes and stars on his dark, fleshy torso. He hadn’t got the chance to admire anyone who isn’t a pale flatboard of clean shaven abs, and this change of scenery pleased him more than he cared to admit. And his arm...  
  
"How are you feeling?" Hanzo asked.  
  
“More awake than when I opened my eyes, that's for sure. The anaesthesia’s one mean fucker but it cleared away pretty quick. Didn’t wanna wake you before I see you all riled up in your chair. Bad dream?”

“Couldn’t remember, to be honest,” he said, sitting down on the side of his bed. “I take it you had a little test run with your new toy.”

“You made it sound like I jerked off with it.” Jesse raised his new metal arm with a gleaming brass finish, turning it and flexing the fingers. It would be a lie to say the transition from the stump looked seamless, but the appendage itself was of fine craftsmanship, its bulky mechanical pieces more durable than aesthetically pleasing, but Jesse's admiring gaze seemed to suggest otherwise.  
  
"I think I like it more than my old one," he snickered, lifting it against the sparkling afternoon light piercing through the window.  
  
"You will remember what you just said when the joint gets inflamed or when you get frostbite from the cold."  
  
Jesse frowned. "That serious?"  
  
Hanzo tried to hold his grim expression and failed. "No. The inflammation will be infrequent once your skin gets used to it, and the frostbite will not be a concern if we can get Reinhardt some carbon-heavy alloy."  
  
Jesse breathed an easy sigh. He crossed his fingers and held them there. "The skull is a nice touch though. Seventeen-year-old Jesse would flip his shit." He looked around, taking in the guest room with its ineligible painting and crackling fireplace. "I have to find some way to thank the old man."  
  
"Thank Lady Shrike too," Hanzo said, grabbing the prosthetic to get an eyeful and felt Jesse stiffen. _A two-hundred-year-old vampire and as bashful as a schoolboy,_ he mused, and reminded himself uncomfortably of the dream. "I've never seen her rest more than two hours over the two days."  
  
"I've only been out for two days?"  
  
"Five. She wanted to make sure you wake up ready to go to lessen the complications. Without her medicine it would take a full week for your nerve functions to return, so don't make that face."

Jesse rolled his eyes. “Anything interesting while I’m gone?”

“Reinhardt sent someone out to fetch your friends. When he realized they literally don't rot he keeps them in the bunker, at your disposal,” he said as Jesse made a disgusted sound. He dug his hand into his pocket, still troubled by how large the spare clothes had been. "And they found this. Thought you would want it as a souvenir."  
  
Feeling the metal orb drop onto his palm was enough to make Jesse gag. He picked up the stray wires sprouting from one end of the eyeball with his new hand. It looked just that, a metal ball, pitifully harmless without the ominous red light outside of someone’s skull. Jesse studied it with an unreadable face.

"Y'know, I could bring back the boss' head to the grove and have an entire firearms empire under my name."

Hanzo crossed his arms. "But you won't."

"No, I won't." He sighed, more relief than anything else. "Don't wanna have to fight for the rest of my life. Power's a thirsty bitch, after all. I'll just use the name to shake things up, maybe set up a board of good, reliable people to run things from now on. My old boss would've liked that."

 _Leaving the old life behind._ Hanzo would've liked that, too.

"Towa and Emi?" he asked, setting the eyeball on the table alongside the folded set of clothes, his hat and gun, a nearly empty glass of water and a digital calendar.  
  
Hanzo tipped his head towards the window. Jesse looked out and beamed, waving as the wolves' excited barks traveled up the tower. “At least some of us are having fun.” He then let his palm slide down the glass, his eyes turning cloudy.  
  
"Emi," he muttered. "Is she alright?"  
  
Hanzo huffed. "We have not found anything troubling so far, but I can reach her in the spirit realm now. Reinhardt wants me to observe any..." he paused, and found himself trapped in the shack with the horrified boy again. "...side effects. As far as I can tell, is she the same? Besides the color upgrade, mostly. Is she alright? I would say yes."  
  
Jesse's face eased. He licked his lips, like he always did when he was nervous. Hanzo realized that when they were in the desert and couldn't stop staring at them since. At first in pure curiosity about how his tongue wouldn't be pierced by those sharp teeth, then in fascination. Hanzo caught himself wondering what he would do with them more than once. 

Jesse's reflection in the window met Hanzo’s eyes, then wandered off into the distant snowscape. He brushed back his hair. "You're not mad at me, are you?"

Hanzo held his gaze lest they steer off and make him look the nervous one. He crossed his arms. "I am, as a matter of fact." He almost relented when Jesse’s head drooped. "I could give myself no reason not to. To think my I have someone this brash, irresponsible and reckless as my partner, I must have lost my head along the way."

Then he lifted Jesse’s chin.

"But I wouldn't want anyone else watching my back for all of the world."

Jesse flitted his eyes, dumbfounded. His jaw would've fallen to the ground if not for Hanzo holding it in place. "But Emi—"

"Emi saved us, but it would be impossible any other way. It was a risk you deemed necessary and it cost you way more than any of us. There is nothing to blame."

"If I had just realized earlier none of this—"

"I am not concerned with the ifs, Jesse McCree," he said, more sternly. "None of those ifs mattered because you did bring Emi back to me, and for that she is grateful. _I_ am grateful."

Jesse’s lips trembled. Hanzo followed his gaze towards the icy wilderness. Beneath the tower Towa was rolling his back in the snow and catching snowflakes on his tongue while Emi, being the little shit she had always been around her sister, smacked her paws full on Towa’s exposed belly before dashing off.

“The color was somewhat of an upgrade, don’t you think?”

Instead of an answer he reached for Hanzo’s hand, holding it against his face where his breath brushed Hanzo’s fingertips, the cool metal pressing against his skin. Hanzo felt his stomach flutter ever so slightly. The strange yearning he found himself trapped in all their time together came bubbling up again, bursting forth and chipping away at the mask he had worn for the demon he had abducted so long ago. 

Jesse almost looked tipsy. “I must’ve given something to the devil to find someone as wonderfully strange as you, your highness.”

“Get used to it,” Hanzo said breezily. “I never allow my boyfriends to outmatch me and you are on thin ice.”

He was treated to another of Jesse’s tongue-tied episodes. _This oaf really didn’t know._ “I ain’t— you never—”

Hanzo decided he might as well shut him up for good. He leaned in on his lips, swift and hard, breathing in the fumbling mess that is Jesse McCree. He still smelled of antiseptics and a sweet metallic tang of blood, but the latter had begun to grow on Hanzo, with his messy almond-scented hair and his wispy scruff scratching Hanzo's chin. _What an absolute wreck,_ Hanzo thought, and couldn’t help himself from smiling.

Jesse seemed too engrossed to tell. He reached out and grabbed Hanzo towards him greedily, his fingers both calloused and metal-cast rubbing against the buzz on the back of his head, little sparks running up where their noses bumped into each other. Jesse’s gasps were fervent and wild. When Hanzo plucked away he took delight in Jesse’s utterly dazed expression.

“Huh,” he said in his stupor.

Hanzo eyed the lump beneath his blanket. “You get excited this easy, cowboy?”

He hurriedly closed his hands around his legs, his face burning a Towa-red.

“Lady Shrike will kill me if you tear a tendon or two, so I am afraid you will have to wait.”

Jesse made a choking noise. He stepped away from the bed, pointing at Jesse crotch. “Good luck resting with that.” 

“Hanzo,” he called when he was at the door.

“I won’t be swayed, Je—”

“No, I mean, look.”

He was staring out the window, but straight ahead. Hanzo leaned against the headboard, scanning the snowy plains and the pine trees that rustled as a gust of wind swept through. “And?”

“There.” He tapped the glass. “Over the hills.”

Hanzo shifted his eyes higher, squinting against the sun. He found another patch of woods sprawling over a steep hill. “There’s nothing but—”

Green. Mustard green. Barely a faint line rising into the distant clouds, but they would never see the color of the smoke elsewhere. Hanzo felt a quiver at the bottom of his spine. A beckoning.

“Is that—”

“Genji,” he said, almost vibrating all over. “It must be.”

“Y’sure? ”

“I can _feel_ him. Gods, they could be in trouble.”

Jesse grabbed his wrist. “I’m going with you.”

“Don’t be absurd. You just had a surgery.”

“You said yourself I'm ready to go!” He waved his metal arm up and down. “I can’t let you go alone.”

“And I can't let you take the risk. You need to—”

“Lady Shrike will be the judge of that.” He sat up, already reaching for his clothes. “Technically Towa’s my girl now and you’re not taking her anywhere without me.”

Hanzo opened his mouth to protest, but decided better. _He’s moving around just fine,_ he told himself. Who was he to tell Jesse no? This was what he had been seeking. An adventure. A selfish part of him couldn’t feel any prouder seeing the fight in Jesse’s eyes.

“You’re hopeless, Jesse McCree.”

“Good. That should be enough to make them piss themselves.” He grinned as he pulled the trousers over his underwear, slipped on his belt and twirled his gun into the holster, watching Hanzo expectantly. “You ready to kick the shit out of those assholes?”

Hanzo tossed him his hat.

“Ready when you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/hoodie_2_shoes), [Tumblr](https://hoodie-two-shoes.tumblr.com/), and [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/jasonl_ens)!  
> 


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